


i throw myself towards glory

by strigastrigastriga (krasnyj)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst and Humor, Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/M, Force chokes, Gen, Hux Has No Chill, Internalized Homophobia, Kylo Ren loves bonzai trees, M/M, Murder, Phasma Ships It, Slow Burn, Slurs, Supernatural Elements, The Force, Unrequited Crush, What is going on, evil hipster Kylo Ren, gratuitous but vague gore, occult nonsense, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-11 09:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5623018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krasnyj/pseuds/strigastrigastriga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren has his whole future mapped out. He's going to figure out all the secrets of the universe in undergrad, then he's going to law school, and then he's going to take over the world. He's still trying to figure out what he'll do with it once he has it. </p><p>So basically, he's pretty busy, and it's not very helpful when his dad decides to try his hand at fathering again, which really boils down to flying lessons, a lot of talk about liberal politics, and a big wet dog. It's super not great that Han has him babysitting a couple of hapless underclassmen, and it's even worse that he's starting to care about them so much that it's interfering with his secret double life as a psycho killer.</p><p>College AU. Please don't take me too seriously</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Qu'est-ce que c'est

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't mind my super subtle references to _psycho killer_ by talking heads. sorry for all the exposition!

Kylo Ren was looking at the haircare products available to him in the men's section at Target. It was was not his favorite place to shop. For one thing, he wouldn't have wasted all of this time looking for a suitable shampoo if they just carried Kérastase Nutritive Bain Satin; next time he would try Walgreens, if there was ever a next time he needed shampoo posthaste at this late hour. (Walmart wasn't even on the table.) He pulled down a few different options and compared their ingredients, finally settling for something with the words "Brazilian keratin therapy" on the bottle (according to his phone research, it had 4.5 out of 5 stars with 36 reviews, which was not as impressive as the ratings on a John Frieda shampoo, but he was not really looking for something that would bring out his blond highlights). He paid for it, his appearance unremarked upon by a cashier with very orange lip gloss.

When he got outside, the cold air hit his wet hair with such force that he could almost hear a crackling ice sound effect. The parking lot lights reflected on the damp pavement in a way that satisfied some aesthetic sense deep within him.

He wasn't sure exactly what Snoke would have said: use the shampoo in the hotel room and damn your hair, or get the right shampoo so no one wonders why you look different. To be fair, Snoke was bald, so he was perhaps not the authority on this particular pickle. But in general, one had to assume that Snoke would have extra shampoo and conditioner and a change of clothes in his trunk, just in case exactly this situation arose. And to be really, brutally honest, there was no one in the world who paid enough attention to Kylo Ren to notice a difference in his hair between this or that day -- but some day, that might not be true, and who knows what fatal error might ultimately incriminate him. Someone might notice that something was off, remember it, make a connection... Well, better to learn now and be ready for the future.

He drove back cautiously, observing the speed limit, and parked near the door to his room. It was a small motel off the highway, named for the county, cheap enough that he could pay with the cash he had on hand, and he gave the name "Jack Smith," which sounded more real than John Doe, at least. Unfortunately, he had a highly recognizable face, but he'd have to count on the clerk caring as little as he seemed to. It had never occurred to him before to ask if that was something he could change, something that would obscure his identity - most people could hide their eyes and go anonymous, but he had a distinctive jawline and nose and mouth, a mouth which, in his opinion, could absolutely be described as "sensuous," but probably never would be by anyone who knew him for more than ten minutes. Good riddance.

He took another shower, this time with the shampoo rather than just rinsing, and was mildly dismayed that the water still ran red with the occasional taint of blood. Something else to remember for next time, if he was dense enough to forget to pack emergency supplies as soon as he had the opportunity: rinse more thoroughly. He wasn't driving a rental, so he'd have to check for blood in the morning. He would also have to do some research on DNA evidence in the most discreet manner, because maybe he'd have to dump the car and burn it. Also discreetly, of course. He could probably make an insurance claim on it.

\------

The next morning, he was back at home, reading the New York Times online when his father called. He almost denied the call reflexively, and as soon as he answered he wished he had. When his father called him "kiddo," it made him feel about five years old, but it was better at least than "champ," which made him feel like a little monkey wearing a fez and a red velvet vest, shaking a can with some coins in it.

What his father said was, "I'll be in town for a little while, so I thought we might go to a baseball game or get some pizza. How about it, kiddo?"

"Han Solo," Kylo said. He thought he should be doing something suave with his free hand, like holding a glass of champagne or a cigar or petting a rare breed of cat, but he was actually trying to one-handedly cap a pen, because he'd had the cap in his mouth when he answered the phone. He didn't have anything else to say, nothing witty or incisive. He never knew how to talk to his father, and he was sure that the man felt the same way, which was why he sounded like he was still talking to a nine-year-old.

He could admit he did actually understand that his father was so desperate to reconnect that he was trying the only thing he'd ever known to work, though Han surely also knew that it would come off as at least kind of pathetic. The man just cared about his son so much that looking like a loser was worth the possibility of getting something right. That knowledge could easily make Kylo Ren vulnerable, if any part of him still cared, too. He'd had this discussion with Snoke more than once and it frustrated him that people kept making degrading assumptions about him. There was nothing he could not overcome, no matter the nature of the obstacle, so long as he had the guidance of the Force. He was already strong, and time would only make him stronger.

Kylo tuned back in to what his father was saying - he was yammering on about flying lessons.

"Both of these kids go to your school, it might be good for them to meet you, you could show them around a bit."

"Kids?"

"The freshmen," his father said, unhelpfully, and then something about how everyone looked young to him these days.

"What were their names again?"

"Rey and Finn. Finn's a bit of a goof, but he means well. I'm impressed with Rey. She's got an old bike that she works on herself. Probably salvaged it from a junkyard, but she's made a lot of special modifications. Natural talent."

"Huh," he said. "Look, I can't really talk right now. But perhaps we can have dinner, oh, say, tomorrow? I had an obligation, but just for you I'll reschedule."

There was a short pause, like Han Solo was trying to work out what game Kylo was playing. Finally, he said "Great! It'll be good to see you again, son. Your mother and I, we miss you." He only stumbled over the words a little.

They set a time and a place, a restaurant that Kylo chose deliberately to put his father on edge - Han Solo would have been happier in a dive bar or a VFW outpost than a French restaurant with $$$$ on the listing, bathroom attendants, a prix fixe menu - which they wouldn't be getting, just so Kylo could hear Han butcher the name of whatever dish he ordered, since the menu also happened to be written in French. Kylo could already see the somewhat bewildered and sad look on his father's face when his son insisted on footing the bill (after letting his father worry if he could afford it, first). Kylo, who didn't have to depend on his family to have nice things.

Rey already sounds like a better son than I ever was, Kylo mused after hanging up. One of his least favorite things about his parents' increasingly infrequent attempts at communication was the roiling cloud of emotions that they still stirred up, inevitably leaving him in a pensive, brooding sulk. He'd walked so far down the path he'd chosen, he couldn't go back. But there was something, a nagging feeling, a gentle tug, like he'd forgotten something important. What was he punishing his father for? Maybe it was time to just move on, let them get over it. They could adopt this Rey kid and her goofy friend Finn. And what if... what if he hadn't made the right choices? Sometimes, when he was alone with his thoughts, he actually felt sick with guilt.

His parents had had a lot of dreams for him. Han coached his elementary school soccer league, and he had swimming lessons and a painting class and they framed a whole series of his shitty tree paintings, which for all he knew were still hanging up across their bedroom wall. Leia read books to him in multiple languages, encouraging him to prepare for the diplomatic service, perhaps, maybe. Han once hoped that he might join the Air Force too, some day, maybe as a mechanic, maybe in avionics, or a pilot - probably go through OCS, be a lifer, retire with a sweet pension and a lot of salty stories. Han Solo served with distinction in Vietnam, flying into enemy territory to drop off special forces guys for secret missions, dropping rations and ammo and making rescues in bad weather under heavy fire. It was dangerous work and, according to some of the medals and honors his father had received, some people thought he was a hero. It was unlikely that Kylo would ever be known as a hero.

But hey, that wasn't someone Kylo had ever really known; his father just liked to putter around with his giant dog, Chewbacca, trekking through the woods around their home in Vermont, occasionally coming home with a handful of flowers he picked for Leia or unexpected company, if he'd met up with some neighbors out in the woods or whatever. Han was charismatic, he couldn't help drawing people to him - and, inevitably, pushing them away. When Kylo was a kid and they were still a real family, they had guests over for nice dinners. Usually military and political types, mostly his mother's friends, like Admiral Ackbar, who was always super dramatic when they played board games or cards. But sometimes shady guys dropped by looking for Han, and he could always feel his mother's disapproval.

When Kylo was older, he found himself looking back and wondering if his dad was drug runner. That didn't make much sense, but neither did Han Solo's decision to leave his family to captain private flights; the family wasn't exactly hurting for money. He just couldn't stand being in one place for too long. So then he was gone more often than not -- flying, or off with Chewbacca on "hunting trips," which was insulting: Kylo Ren's biggest competition for his father's attention, back when he wanted it, was a dog. And the dog won.

Maybe it was because Kylo was too much of a disappointment. He didn't enjoy getting grease on his hands and clothes when his dad tried to teach him how to tinker around with a motorcycle or his big restoration project, a classic car with a souped-up engine that Han called the Millennium Falcon, _really_ \- it just never was the bonding experience it was meant to be. And at school, he'd been in the debate club, not the captain of the football team.

Politics was his plan for a long time. He didn't want to end up like his mother, either, fighting for causes that she cared about so much that she lost sleep and forgot to eat. What was the point of having power if you couldn't use it to get what you wanted? Or maybe, to put a different spin on it, what was the point of wanting something you couldn't have? She wanted peace, but in Kylo's personal opinion the only way to achieve peace on Earth was to scoot all the humans off the planet.

At the very least, he was grateful to them for giving him an example of who not to be. He was majoring in Political Science, and when he graduated he was going to work on a campaign and prepare to pass the LSAT with flying colors. Then he'd go to one of the best law schools, ensuring that he could actually work when he graduated, and he'd get the right experience with the right people and then some day, Kylo Ren for Supreme Court Justice. Kylo Ren for president.

The conclusion reassured him, shored up his convictions. He was doing what he wanted, and he was doing it well.

He hadn't planned on minoring in Theology, but he'd never anticipated someone like Snoke _existing_ , much less taking him on as a protégé.

 --------

Kylo Ren spent the afternoon revising a paper about the history and development of Kenya's electoral system. He went through the workout that he tried to follow every other day, alternating with runs; just some weights and isometrics, nothing too serious, although he found that he did have to increase the weight and reps every now and then to keep feeling any kind of burn. He wasn't actually interested in beefing up, he just wanted to make sure he had a healthy heart, kept his blood pressure low. And people paid attention to appearances - he needed to make a good first impression, wanted people to look at him and feel his strength.

Didn't stop him from ordering pizza for dinner. He figured if it ever got out that he was a Hawaiian pizza guy, people would find it kind of endearing, humanizing. Except for people who didn't eat pork for religious reasons, maybe it would bother them. He just loved that blend of sweet and savory! Even when he meant to order something else, he'd end up asking for ham and pineapple.

He wasn't much of a cook, so he had a pizza a lot. Especially when he wasn't in the mood for going out and being seen, having to talk to people and feel their eyes on him. Sometimes he felt like they  _knew,_ and they judged him, found him wanting. It was all in his head, he'd tell himself, but it usually spoiled his meal. 

Snoke had called to check in with him in the afternoon, a couple hours after Han's call. It filled Kylo with a sense of pride that he was important enough to merit these personal calls and that Snoke took his calls, if he ever really needed to get in touch. It wasn't so great that he had to admit that he lost control of his Force choke, putting too much power into it and causing the guy's head to burst like a melon. Snoke laughed a dry little laugh at that description. It was disgusting, totally traumatic -- he was going to make a real effort to never lose control like that again. It meant checking in to the hotel with his hoodie up to conceal the blood and gore in his hair, stains on the shirt underneath from where he'd wiped off his face. Just a total shitshow, honestly, but he'd kept his cool.

"So long as you covered your tracks and learned your lesson," Snoke said. "It seems that we should revisit some of our earlier training."

Kylo bit back a cry of disappointment and said only, "Of course, Supreme Leader."

He should have said something about meeting with his father, but he didn't want to. It was that shockingly simple: he didn't want to. The Supreme Leader had little tolerance for personal whims and secrets, especially secrets that might affect someone's performance. But... Kylo knew what he was about. If the dinner didn't go as he expected, he'd bring it up with Snoke and ask for advice. He didn't mention the shampoo thing, either, because he was removed enough from the situation that it seemed stupid, in hindsight. He had just been jittery, making a big deal out of absolutely nothing. He'd needed something to focus on that wasn't the sight of human brains, the coppery smell of wet, fresh blood.

And he'd also been afraid of, he didn't want to talk about now, the almost intoxicating little thrill he'd gotten from how much power he held over --- anyone. Everyone. Anyone who got in his way, he could literally crush them. _Literally_.

Which somehow did nothing to console him when he was playing Gears of War 3 online later and some punk sniped him like ten times in a row. It felt totally personal and ended with him tearing his headset off and throwing the controller at the TV. At least this time he didn't throw it hard enough to crack the screen and knock the TV backwards off the table. It was outbursts like that that meant that, after freshman year, he lived alone.

He made some tea, his evening ritual. It was loose leaf tea, so he had to set up the strainer and measure out the right amount of leaves. Sometimes he made tea with dried chrysanthemums, and he had a little clear pot so he could watch them bloom. Tonight, he was having his favorite oolong tea, which smelled slightly of lilacs. He could steep the leaves three times and it maintained its rich, bold flavor. He took his cup and stood by the window, his breath mingling with the steam rising from his mug and frosting the glass.

He had a nice view of downtown. In the summer, he often sat on the balcony, imagining that the air was fresher up that high. He didn't feel like brushing the snow off the chair and still getting his rear wet if he went out to sit, but if it started snowing again he might go stand by the railing just to look up and see the snow falling at him - like he was flying through space, stars passing him by.

Some of the tallest buildings around his were residential, some were businesses. The offices that remained lit late into the night made him feel kind of mixed up, simultaneously comforted that others were up at all hours, too, that he wasn't the only one awake, and yet also melancholy that there were so many people living such busy lives and he was up here by himself, alone, drifting through space.

In Vermont, they were surrounded by trees. The family property edged up on the shore of a small lake, and on the other side there were some cozy little cabins for people to rent, families in the summer and hunters during hunting season. The lights were too far away and faint to be seen, usually, and they were all used to the occasional muted shot. Somehow, though, it wasn't the same kind of loneliness as a city at night. The solitude of the woods let Kylo feel like the world was his.

Some day he would be better, he would make observations calmly; the truth wouldn't mean anything more to him than what it was. Maybe some day he would own some of those buildings, and he could take more comfort in all the busy people working hard for him. Or maybe he would raze all of the buildings and there would be no one left and none of the work would get done.

Thoughts like that came to him from the Dark Side of the Force, and he tried to file them away for future reference, disapassionately, but sometimes it frightened him. Thoughts that weren't his own streamed through his head, twisted him up and filled him with hot, bitter hatred. It would have been really super fucking nice to just go home during the winter holiday, to hug his mother again, to hear her say that everything was going to be okay and to believe it, to be soothed by her fingers stroking his hair. She'd have plugged in his little spaceship nightlight - their secret, because Han would have had a hard time respecting how much that nightlight helped Kylo sleep. It chased away the deepest shadows.

He let the Force fill his head with images of his grandfather, his grandfather's motorcycle helmet, battered from the crash. His grandfather had left him a legacy. He was hungry for it. That's why he was here, doing hard work that hurt. He was going to eat up the whole world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think Kylo Ren is interesting because he seems so out of control and young and I don't really get his motivation (I want to explore that here), he's an odd villain. he was not my favorite in the movie, but a lot of respect for the actor (oorah). I just had this weirdsville idea for a story and now I'm seeing where it goes - trying to balance the kind of comical aspects of ol' Kylo with some Serious Business, I hope it reads ok. if you made it here, I hope you enjoyed it :) I would love feedback and I am open to criticism!


	2. sobbing at a pizza buffet and they asked me to leave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to do solid research about stuff like flying planes because I don't even know anything (シ. .)シ  
> thanks for reading!

"Suprême de Canard Croustillant, Darphin de Châtaignes, Demi-Glace au Porto," Han Solo said, obviously enjoying every syllable that left his mouth. The waiter plucked the menu out of his hands and turned to look at Kylo expectantly.

"The Kobe beef," Kylo said, "Côte de Boeuf Kobe..." His tongue felt thick.

His father had shown up in dress pants with a dadly sweater and significantly more cheer than Kylo was prepared for. He looked somewhat professorial, especially when he pulled out his glasses to read. He'd browsed the menu briefly, then asked Kylo what he was going to order, because Han wanted the duck breast but also a taste of some sweet Kobe beef. Flustered, Kylo agreed, and then they set their menus aside. They were talking about Kylo's classes when the waiter came to take their orders, and Han surprised Kylo by also ordering a bottle of champagne. He had the vague suspicion that his father was making some kind of point, possibly that he remembered what Kylo liked, and Kylo Ren really liked champagne more than he liked making statements about not accepting champagne from estranged fathers.

The waiter left, and Han clasped his hands on the table in front of him. He was aging well. "This takes me back. I had some good times in Paris," Han said, looking around. "Before I met your mother," he added with a hasty cough.

Kylo felt like rolling his eyes, but instead he ran his finger around the rim of his champagne flute. He wasn't going to drink first, and he wasn't going to drink the entire bottle. "How is Leia?" he asked.

"I'm sure you follow the news." Han moved his water glass around, dabbing at the wet circle it left on the tablecloth.

Kylo took a delicate sip of his champagne. I won't _chug_ it, he told himself. He'd never been to this restaurant before; it was entirely too fancy for him on his own. He'd never eaten with Snoke, and couldn't even imagine the Supreme Leader doing something so banal as tearing at bread, buttering a roll, or trying to spear peas with a fork. He'd heard that Snoke preferred Lebanese, Morroccan, Afghan cuisine, mostly vegetable dishes, lentils, yoghurt.

He absolutely could imagine the Supreme Leader relaxing with some opium or hashish, smoked languidly from a long-stemmed pipe in a room full of tasseled cushions and luxurious rugs. It was entirely a fantasy. The thought of Hux wriggling and fretting when commanded to make a report while the Supreme Leader smoked some hash made Kylo grin.

"It is pretty cool," Han said, and Kylo realized that his father thought he was actually paying attention to the conversation.

Kylo drank some more champagne.

"Yep, I've just got to clean her out. Minimal interior damage, maybe get some new tires, fresh coat of paint. Have to spend more time under the hood, make sure they didn't mess up the engine."

"Oh, the Millennium Falcon," Kylo said, not entirely succeeding at keeping the sneer out of his voice. Apparently his father had recovered it -- it had been stolen several years ago, and Kylo Ren had felt Han disturb the Force from like at least a thousand miles away.

"It was a helluva way to meet Rey," Han said. "She's lucky I didn't shoot her first. Or," he went on, thoughtfully, "sic Chewie on her."

"That dog isn't dead yet?"

"Oh, he's going to outlive me," Han said, finally tasting his champagne. "I don't understand how you can drink this stuff. Give me a beer or some whisky any day."

"Sorry, _Dad_ ," Kylo snapped, "Maybe you can go drinking with Rey later.”

"Hey now," Han said, putting his hands up. "I'm not here to--"

But he didn't have a chance to say what, because their food arrived.

Han Solo immediately sawed off a bite of Kylo's steak, which he reviewed while still chewing by winking at Kylo and making the "OK" sign with his left hand.

Kylo poured some more champagne before taking a bite. The meat absolutely melted in his mouth.

"Very glad you chose this place," Han said, inspecting his own meal. "I'd never eat at a nice joint like this, but this is a damn fine dinner."

"Great," Kylo gritted out. "Glad I could show you a good time."

"Are you driving yourself home?" Han asked.

"I don't have a chauffeur. Yet."

"Yet, he says." Han raised his eyebrows, looking at his dinner, not Kylo.

Kylo Ren bristled. "I'm not a drunk driver."

"That is absolutely not what I was implying," Han said, poking his fork at Kylo for emphasis. "I was just thinking, maybe we could go drinking, or, or get coffee, catch a movie, go somewhere after dinner. If, you know, you don't have somewhere else to be."

"I have a lot of work," Kylo said with a huff, settling back into his chair.

Han waved a hand and said, "Of course you're busy. We'll get together another time. I'll introduce you to Finn and Rey, we can go for a ride in the Falcon, maybe you'll come along for a flight."

"What kind of plane?"

"DA20."

"Not the C1?"

"Nah, Finn likes to pretend he's in a fighter."

"Are you sleeping in the Millennium Falcon?"

It was a 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle Greenbrier, a big clunky station wagon, painted the color of milk. Han had replaced the engine with a 402/400, 450 HP, claimed that it "flew" and that he could drive from one side of the continent to the other in 30 hours, so long as his radar system was operational. Kylo had almost called his father when he saw that someone made the trip in just under 29 hours, but at the time he was really not talking to his family. And later that week, Lando Calrissian posted a link to the story on Facebook and Han left a comment about how this other guy took a different route, anyway, so it had nothing to do with his record, whatever.

"I'm renting a condo, short-term," Han said. "I'm actually going to be out here for a little while."

"Laying low?" Kylo asked.

Han scoffed in a way that suggested Kylo was right on the money. Kylo chose not to press, and they enjoyed the rest of their dinner without too many more smart remarks. It was something of a surprise when Han Solo insisted that the check be given to him, and it was only Kylo's good manners that kept him from snatching the bill right out of his father’s fingers.  
He didn't want to mention that he'd ridden here on his motorcycle, because then his father would want to talk about specs and performance and upgrades, but Kylo could only say that he'd bought the coolest looking thing in the dealership and it got good mileage. And that he rode it with the Force guiding him, and that he was sick of hearing variations on the joke that "there are two types of motorcycle riders, those who've had accidents and those who haven't had accidents yet," because fuck that.

When he was leaving, his father had put on a long woolen coat and was wrapping a black and red tartan scarf around his neck. It seemed like something Leia would have given him. They'd made tentative plans to meet up the next time there was a clear day, good for flying, so that Kylo could meet Finn and Rey. He had a sneaking suspicion that his father was using all of the Rey this, Rey that talk to sink a hook into Kylo's ego so that he would come out just to show up Rey. No matter - it would be easy to back out later.

He had his motorcycle gloves and a black leather jacket. It was quite heavy, but Kylo could still feel the bitter, biting wind when he was going 80 on a back road. Radar-shmadar, he could easily talk his way out of anything. He did, however, catch a glimpse of himself as he passed a building covered with glass, and he realized that his helmet clearly obscured his identity, harkened back to his grandfather, and gave him an alien sense of menace. He'd had the helmet custom made, definitely in no way inspired by Tali and the quarians from Mass Effect. It was shaped to suggest that the person wearing it might be something other than human, and none of Kylo's face was visible whatsoever. He liked it because it made him look like a badass who didn't even care if he could see properly when he was riding, which he didn't, because he saw with the Force. Riding was an excellent way to practice precision and control over a long stretch of time. He was often exhausted at the end of a ride, as he was tonight.

He walked into his apartment and didn’t bother to flips the lights on. He took his helmet off and shook his mane of splendid hair back into a semblance of life. Before they left their table, Han Solo had carefully sliced off little slivers of duck breast and Kobe beef for Chewbacca, tucking them into what looked like a dime bag, which he hastily stuffed back into a pocket.  
Kylo was almost so tired that he skipped his evening tea, but when he lay down he found that he was too irritable to sleep. His brain was full of jagged memories. Children shouting, tongues of fire licking up the walls, a man's head imploding, looking in a rear-view mirror and seeing nothing but darkness.

He made a pot of jasmine tea. It was white tea, not green, and the flavor was extremely mild. What he enjoyed about it was watching the flower bloom, red in the center. He had three bonsai by a south-facing window, and he checked to make sure that the soil was still damp for all of them. He had them in shallow trays with gravel and water, which was supposed to provide extra humidity to make up for his apartment's heating system. None of them needed to trimmed or pinched, and he had at least two more years before it was time to re-pot.

  
When he finally slept, he dreamt that a bright light washed over him, caressing his face and cleansing him, burning all the way through to his blood and bones.

When he woke in the morning, he found that his face was wet with tears.

 

\------

  
"You shouldn't skip class," Hux said.

Kylo gave him a dirty side-eye, but didn't deign to say anything in response.

"You can have my notes, if you need them," his companion added.

"Thanks," Kylo said, failing entirely to sound in any way grateful. Hux's notes were always very neat and detailed, because he didn't seem to understand that all of the slides were available online and whatever the professor actually _said_ in class was never covered on any of the exams and they were discouraged from citing personal communications in their papers.

He didn't care much for this course, an upper-level undergraduate seminar about the "politics of numbers" and global attention to political violence. It sounded fascinating, but the professor and most of the students were so super liberal, they found violence devastating, not effective. In their discussion groups, which Kylo especially hated, people were always dropping peace and love rhetoric or disclosing their personal emotional distress or condemning _fascists_ and _tyrants_ , blah blah. Kylo Ren had no idea what it was like to be so delicate, but he could kind of imagine that this was what his mother was like when she was younger. He knew that most of the people in the class were pleased that he mostly felt disinclined to participate, since he was so much more interested in the effectiveness of this or that attack, the specific statistics, the way that bodies were counted. Several of the other students had humanitarian agendas, and any time Kylo even opened his mouth there was usually at least one disgusted groan or a "come on, man."

Hux would give the other students nasty looks, but he was still trying to work through his stage fright, so he rarely raised his hand to share anything. Before and after class, though, he acted like he was Kylo's head of PR, commenting on how Kylo Ren presented himself and what he could have said, or should have said differently, or whether he ought to have even spoken up at all.

If Kylo were to return the favor, he would definitely have passed on the trendy fashion tip that riding jodhpurs were best worn while actually riding a horse or, better yet, never. He didn't, however, want to initiate another inane scolding from Hux about how it seemed that Kylo just wore the same thing all the time, since his wardrobe was almost entirely black and that most goths had the good sense to grow out of it by the end of high school. Well, Yohji Yamamoto said that “black is modest and arrogant at the same time.” And yeah, sometimes it was convenient to pull his hair back in a little man bun, so what? At least he’d never considered getting a Korn tattoo, _Hux_. The fact that this was an actual conversation they’d had made his teeth hurt.

They went to a student café after class. It was attached to one of the bigger libraries and centrally located on campus, so there were usually a lot of students at various levels of studiousness. Hux ordered a slice of carrot cake, which he ate with stupendous finesse: one tiny forkful, then just a little bit of frosting on one tine, then another tiny bite. He chewed very thoroughly, something that had been grinding on Kylo's nerves for approximately two years. If Hux weren't such a fan of this particular carrot cake, they'd probably be spending time at a cooler off-campus spot.

Phasma sidled up to them when Kylo was almost done with his coffee, which he'd tried to drink black. She immediately asked him how it went, and for a moment he thought she meant the coffee, then he was certain that they'd been spying on him and they knew about his dinner with Han Solo. But she was looking at him with an expectant grin and Hux had an especially snooty expression, and it occurred to him that they were actually waiting to hear about the business he'd conducted for the Supreme Leader. Phasma and Hux had no doubt been texting about it for the past few days, just waiting for this moment.

"I was a bit over-zealous in my application of pressure, but ultimately it was a successful mission," he said.

Phasma slapped him on the back. Unlike the vein of competition that ran through Hux and Kylo Ren's every interaction, Phasma seemed fairly content to keep close behind them, following in their footsteps. She wanted to do her job well and she was loyal to the Supreme Commander. Kylo appreciated that about her, but not the fact that she could probably bench him and Hux at the same time.

A couple of weeks ago, one of her kids defected. She was in charge of the indoctrination and training of children, most of whom were in the foster system, their dormant army. It wasn't Kylo's business — he didn’t need anyone else to fight his battles, and he didn't know much about the intricate workings of their scheme, but a few weeks ago, Phasma was collapsed on his couch, a pillow pressed to her stomach, trying to understand where she failed. How could someone not want to be a part of their grand plan? Was it her fault? How could she have failed? If it happened once, would it happen again? She didn’t want to take the time to try to hunt him down personally; he’d disappeared near a desert, there was no way she could search an entire desert, and did anyone really expect her to actually even try?

His own thoughts branching off, Kylo Ren wasn't entirely sure that he was part of their grand plan, either. He never let the thought linger in his mind long enough that Snoke might sense it, but he assumed that some day he would be the Supreme Leader. Or something else, maybe, he could probably come up with something cooler.

Of course, he didn't say that to Phasma. He made noncommittal noises at the appropriate points in their conversation, handed her a packet of SweeTarts, and kept on with his Swiffering, because it was cleaning day. Then he turned on Netflix and they watched _Parks and Rec_ for a few hours.  


 

\------

  
He 100% meant to not have anything more to do with Han Solo, but somehow he still found himself in a small “Mexican” cantina sitting next to none other than the fantastic Mr. Finn, who had on a nice leather jacket and a nervous smile.

Finn had come up to him while he was sitting at the bar, drinking a blue margarita, and called him "Ben," which immediately put Kylo in a worse mood.

"It's Kylo," he said, shaking Finn's hand too firmly. "Kylo Ren."

Finn winced.

"Nice to meet you, Kylo Ren," Finn said, sounding like a liar.

"Are we the first ones here?" Kylo asked.

"No, but Rey went out with Han to take a look at how the restoration's going." Perhaps noticing that Kylo's expression grew darker with everything he said, Finn hurried on to safer ground: "If you want to come, uh, over here with me, we got some chips already. I haven't tried the spicy salsa, but the guacamole is amazing." With the look of someone sharing a deep secret, he said, "I've never had avocado before, and I feel like I'm alive for the first time."

Then, somewhat oddly, he grabbed Kylo's hand and pulled him over towards a roomy corner booth. There were little papier mâché skeletons playing instruments hanging on the wall, and the light over the table was stained glass, blue hyacinths.

Kylo couldn't remember the last time someone had held his hand, skin to skin. He felt shy, which was unexpected and also made him feel kind of creepy. He was glad that he'd managed to snag his margarita before his abduction. He slid into the booth next to Finn, although his instincts told him to stand until the others came so that he could sit on the outside. Instead, he ate some of the guacamole, at Finn's urging, and agreed that it was quite good, and then watched Finn eat the rest of it and order more from the waiter with a kind of sneaky, guilty expression.

"I will pay for this," Finn said, pointing at the second guac and nodding. In a quieter, more serious voice, he said again, "I will pay for this."

Kylo shrugged and hailed the waiter, ordering a Negra Modelo.

“Are you old enough to drink?” he asked Finn.

“Uh, not, um - yes?”

Kylo raised his eyebrows.

“In dog years. If my years were dog years,” Finn said.

“What?”

“I’d be like… a hundred, man.”

“Oh, you mean if you were a dog.”

“That is not what I said,” Finn insisted.

“But it’s what you meant,” Kylo said, tipping back his beer and resisting the urge to wink. He sometimes felt entirely too much like Han Solo’s son.

Speak of the devil: there was Han, and next to him was a fresh-faced sporty young thing, wearing a puffy coat, leggings, sneakers, and her hair pulled back in a complicated hair contraption. She was laughing about something, until she looked away from Han and directly into Kylo Ren’s eyes. It was a jerky motion, but quick, like she’d been compelled, or — forced. Looking at her, he noticed snowflakes, not yet melted, still resting on her hair, and her eyes, which were large and dark. For a moment, she was dazzling, illuminated by a light that didn’t touch anyone else in the cantina. His mother sometimes had a soft glow, but nothing like this. It was like Uncle Luke.

Kylo realized that his teeth were clenched and Han and Finn were looking back and forth from him to Rey.

“Do you two know each other?” Han asked.

“Absolutely not,” Rey said, a strange look on her face, at the same time that Kylo said "Negatory," and then felt like a pompous ass. He wasn’t expecting her accent or the heat of her response. She seemed to have surprised herself, as well, because she gave her head a little shake and stuck her hand out towards Kylo, a bright smile returning to her face.

“I’m Rey,” she said.

“Kylo Ren,” he said, and she gave him a solid shake.

Kylo didn’t notice Finn echoing him and throwing a questioning look at Han.

“It’s a pleasure,” Rey said, pulling her hand away like she wanted to wipe it on her leggings.

Kylo gave her a weak smile and wished that he didn’t feel such a stabbing, twisting pain in his chest. If he were anywhere else, he would have swiped everything off the table, just to make a mess and watch things shatter. He might have pounded on the table until the wood splintered or simply upended it and put his fist through a window. He definitely would have yanked the lamp down from the ceiling and thrown it to the ground. Instead, he took a shaky sip of his beer and looked over at Finn, remembering the feeling of their hands touching. Finn didn’t notice, he was puzzling over the menu with Han.

Rey gave Kylo a curious look.  
  
“So,” she said. “Tell me about Kylo Ren.”


	3. and you’ll think “Top. Let’s smash it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone saw _the revenant_ !  
>  i have not read the novelization & i just learned that that means i am missing out on a lot of things :-o forgive me for everything i leave out or muck up and for all the food, i love looking at menus, and also for all the low key murder.

Kylo and Hux occasionally played badminton, so Kylo mentioned that to Rey after he got her started on athletics by making a comment about her lightweight, aerodynamic shoes. She was on the crew team, which demanded a lot from her in terms of fitness. Not to impress her, because he knew he wouldn’t, Kylo did mention his daily workouts. Rey talked about rowing and women’s soccer and spelunking and rock climbing with so much enthusiasm that Kylo actually accidentally agreed to go jogging with her and also to show up at one of her races.

But all of that was excellent, really, because it meant a successful deflection of her question. Kylo Ren could talk about his major and describe his neighborhood and make restaurant recommendations, he could chat about the weather or books or whatever passed for culture at the moment, but really there was no one who needed to know more about him than what he made public on his Facebook page. Even Phasma and Hux, who had been to his apartment and knew about his bonsai and his fancy cutlery and _Scooby Doo_ DVDs had no idea what went on in Kylo’s head or his heart, not really. Only Snoke was allowed. The best thing about it was that all these other people didn’t know that they didn’t know, but he could tell that Rey was different. He had more than a hunch that she was the type to sense when he was holding something back and to have no compunctions about bothering him until he spat it out. In fact, she would probably think she was doing him a favor.

Normally, he stayed away from people like that like the plague, but there was something about Rey, something about the way that the Force moved through and around her. Her presence alone was calming and refreshing, and in conversation she was so genuine, so guileless — she and Finn were so incredibly charming, like a pair of pugs. It would have been best if he’d never met her, because then he’d never have known what he was missing.

Han Solo! Was there ever a more troublesome man?

Still. It was really a nice dinner. There was none of the shop talk like meals with Hux and Phasma, none of the half-hearted animosity between him and Hux. Plus, Phasma was cheap - how many times had she invited Kylo over for a home-cooked dinner and then made him ramen and asked for help with an assignment? She probably thought she was being sneaky every time, but he only went along because it was kind of nice to sit on her janky couch making revisions on a paper or looking over her calculations while she unabashedly folded laundry, including intimates, and they’d chop it up about school and life, and then she might teach him how to escape a headlock or make corrections to his fighting stance. 

Finn ordered a chimichanga, Han Solo had sopes de chorizo, Rey had a machaca burrito and Kylo ordered the adobada with pineapple(!!) and avocado salsa. They talked for so long after they’d finished eating that they were hungry enough to order dessert, so they shared orders of buñuelos and cream-filled churros. Kylo liked the food enough to take out his phone to make a note of the restaurant’s name and suddenly Rey and Finn texting themselves from his phone so they’d all have each other’s numbers. Finn typed “FINN!” and Rey sent the emoji of a person in a boat.

Han and Kylo Ren argued about who was going to pay, with Kylo eventually making the successful case that his father had already paid for more expensive food, although there were only the two of them then, so this would make them even and Han could pay for the next dinner. (Where was he getting all the money, by the way?) Finn insisted on getting the tip, since Kylo wouldn’t let him pay for the extra guacamoles.

He didn’t want anyone to see him riding his bike, which was absurd, because he bought it specifically so that people could see him riding his bike, but he had to linger until they all took off in their own direction — Han insisted on giving Rey and Finn a ride when they let slip that they’d gotten here by bus and would have to walk half a mile and then wait in the cold. They all said goodbye out on the street, clouds of breath drifting up into the darkness. Rey shook his hand and Finn gave him a great big hug, which he wasn’t prepared for, so all of his muscles tensed. He gave Finn a half-hearted pat on the back and was kind of surprised that he didn’t get a couple of European cheek kisses, too. Han Solo looked far too pleased with himself, so when he stretched out a hand to shake, Kylo gave him a low five and a salute. Han Solo’s expression changed briefly to "disgruntled,” and then he returned the salute.

“See you, old man,” Kylo said, and turned away.

He could hear, as they left, Rey saying, “He wasn’t half the prat I expected,” and Finn going “Hu-shoosh, he can probably hear you,” and Han was laughing.

Then he made a phone call.

———

He rode his bike out away from the city to a small gas station with really cheap gas and waited, watching the snow melt as it hit the pavement. He liked the sharp smell of gasoline and suffering through the cold would make him less weak, so he didn’t mind the wait. Eventually, a battered green pickup drove up and parked near Kylo Ren’s bike, in the darkness by the air pump. The driver didn’t comment on the fact that Kylo was still wearing his motorcycle helmet, but he kind of coughed when Kylo slid into the passenger seat. They drove even farther from the city to a clearing in the woods where the man helped Kylo spread out a tarp on the ground and then together they carried a heavy bundle wrapped in a rug from the back of the truck. Kylo unrolled the rug, revealing a man with a bruise forming where the thin line of blood trickling down his forehead originated. He was unconscious, so Kylo kicked him a few times.

As his eyes opened, cloudy and unfocused from a concussion, Kylo bent down and pulled at the necklace tucked into his shirt.

“Hey—” the man began to protest, and Kylo wondered what he thought as he looked up and saw his own frightened reflection on the surface of the helmet. It wouldn’t be a mystery for long. He pulled on the necklace so hard that the chain snapped. The man’s head bounced back and hit the ground, and he yelped.

“Let’s talk about this,” Kylo said, dangling the necklace over the man’s face. It was a round piece of metal, an amulet, really, with a lot of intricate little lines carved across its surface. “Did you believe that this could protect you?”

The man said something witty, though all the blood had drained from his face, and Kylo said, in his most menacing, silky voice — which he realized that the motorcycle helmet probably distorted, but whatever — “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here.” He invaded the man’s mind cruelly, without warning and with more power than he really needed. The man let out a broken cry as Kylo Ren rifled through his thoughts and memories, his dreams and fears. There was a woman’s face, smiling, and then the woman was dead. The man was a child in school, looking up at someone who was taller, who blocked out the sun. He was always looking up. He was grown and holding a machete, he was carefully carving runes into the door of his car, into the headboard of his bed. He was speaking to - no, he was watching Leia Organa, when she was much younger, and she was speaking, speaking to a crowd of people. It wasn’t the kind of event you might televise. He was never important enough to speak to Leia personally, and now he was a corpse.

After he’d seen enough, Kylo Ren wrenched free of the man’s mind. The man was weeping. Kylo hadn’t bothered to learn his name. He put his arm out and clenched his fist, and the man’s throat closed. Kylo watched him writhing on the ground, his own expression calm and composed.

When it was done, he called out to the man who’d driven them there. The goon had gone back to his truck because no one liked to watch Kylo at work: usually he was too high-strung to take the easy, bloodless route. Together, they rolled up the tarp carefully and wound heavy twine around it tightly. They carried it to the truck and drove back to the gas station. The information wasn’t important enough to bother Snoke with now. Tomorrow, in the morning. They only exchanged words when the man requested that Kylo follow him in case cops pulled him over.

“You can put the whammy on them,” he said, and Kylo wanted to laugh.

 _The whammy_ indeed, he thought. He was in a good mood, so he acquiesced. As he was sliding one leg over the seat of his bike, he felt his phone vibrate, and impulsively, he pulled it out to check, feet planted on either side of the bike. It was a text from Finn: two taco emojis. The corner of Kylo Ren’s mouth quirked up, and he took off a glove so that he could send back the two-beers-clinking emoji. He had been kind of hoping that it would be a text from Rey, but he didn’t want to ask himself why he’d want that.

“Hey,” the man in the truck called out.

Kylo waved a hand dismissively, pulled the glove back onto his hand, switched the bike on, kicked the kickstand up, shifted gears and revved. The man took off and Kylo followed him clear across the city, regretting his magnanimity. Still, you had to see things to the end.

When he finally got home, it was nearly two in the morning. His apartment seemed cold even though the heat was on. It was the big glass windows, not the emptiness. I should get some fish, Kylo thought. He wanted a night light, but he was afraid that someone would see it, or Snoke would find out about it, or something, some unforeseen thing.

It seemed wrong, sometimes, to have the things he wanted.

———

He woke up with what felt like a hangover, so he had sausage and eggs for breakfast, fried with lots of butter, before he tried to drink any coffee, and he ended up having orange juice instead, so he was groggy until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Fortunately, it was a Sunday, and he had nowhere to be.

There were no texts from his new “friends,” and wow was it weird to think that. In the group text he had with Hux and Phasma, Phasma had sent a picture of a kitten hanging on a screen door, and Hux had written about a dream in which he was a military captain on the frontier in the old days and now he was inspired to grow a beard. Kylo wrote back, “we can’t stop you from trying.”

He left a message for Snoke, oddly relieved that he didn’t have to speak with the Supreme Leader just right then. He used their code to indicate that he was fine and everything went well; obviously he wasn’t going to leave any incriminating details.

He looked around his pristine apartment and felt like he needed to do something different. He tried rearranging his coffee table books so that the one with the pictures of skyscrapers was on top, but then he spent half an hour flipping through the astronomy book and thinking about what might be out there in all those galaxies far, far away.

It didn’t seem to be a terribly productive use of his time, so eventually he delivered himself into the shower and went through his daily ablutions. It was after four when he left the apartment, and he took his car, because he wanted his heated seat and CDs. As soon as he left his building’s parking garage, however, he realized that he didn’t want to be in his car or in the city or anywhere at all. He had these fits of despair occasionally, so his body was well-trained to autopilot, and when he came back to himself, he was parked at an art museum. With his student ID, it only cost $12 to go in. He spent a few minutes staring at some modern art, which looked kind of like the angry noise in his brain, which wasn’t helpful, so he hustled on into the European gallery to see a lot of burly nude women. He meandered through Ancient and Byzantine to the Renaissance room with the armor and illuminated manuscripts, but none of it was captivating enough to pull him out of his own crawling skin. An art gallery with security guards and cameras was the wrong place to have an outburst, but he wasn’t angry, exactly. He felt aimless, lost.

As he got into his car, he realized that he had completely wasted the afternoon — he hadn’t bought _any_ fish. He wanted something sentient to share his apartment with, something less judgmental than the bonsai. It was late, too late for pet stores to still be open. He set a reminder in his phone to go on Tuesday, since he had classes all day Monday. When he got home, he ate some leftover pizza, cold, while he sat in front of his laptop, looking up pictures of different kinds of fish and their feeding and care instructions.

———

Snoke’s office was filled with books. Shelves full of books that lined the walls, piles and stacks of books, literal towers of books in a careful balancing act, somewhat acrobatic, that discouraged any sudden movements or slammed doors. They were books that you looked at and didn’t have to open to see the thin, almost-translucent pages, like in old dictionaries, with all the print the size of a footnote. Millions of words, in tens of languages at the very least, ancient books with gilt edges, gold and red, and little fabric bookmarks trailing here and there. Zoroastrian books, books in Arabic, cookbooks, grimoires, books that would begin to crumble if you looked at them wrong.

Snoke sat behind his desk, tiny and bald, looking like he, too, was made of paper. It was a kind of camouflage, Kylo thought.

 

He left an hour later. It was always difficult to go from a session with Snoke to a class. Some of his professors had little pet projects that they couldn’t stop themselves from going on and on about, the 45 minutes spent listening to and discussing ancient wax recordings of one obscure Russian poet’s voice, whose tangential relationship to the class was his execution by the KGB, or the hours spent in the contemplation of the coins minted during Genghis Khan’s world tour — there were times when Kylo just wanted to give up all of his material concerns and turn into a pine martin, or at the very least go home and lie down.

But adversity, Snoke said, fed growth. He had to go to class and pay attention and do well on his assignments, whether his body and soul were trembling from a total mental invasion or not, but especially when his brain felt like mince meat and his eyes were red around the rims. Having his every weakness and flaw exposed was the kind of invaluable lesson that no other teacher could offer. He was grateful, he really was, and Snoke knew that, and that’s why Kylo had been allowed to progress so far.

First he described his interrogation, and then Snoke watched it, playing it backwards and forwards. They’d watched a man’s head implode, his eyes rolling back as his cheeks puffed out, felt the hot water that washed away his remains, listened to Kylo’s heart pounding when he was alone inside of his helmet, and when Kylo came back to himself in the office his knees were stiff from kneeling and he was about to vomit all over Snoke’s expensive shoes. Snoke rested a hand on his head and smiled, a beneficent and deeply serene expression.

After he got back to his apartment, he would meditate for an hour or three. Snoke said he needed focus. He couldn’t always fuel himself with rage and pain, he couldn’t be so dependent on his own lack of control. He had to be more detached, the way he had been with the talisman-man from the night before. He had to remove himself from the situation; every time he left himself unguarded, his victims got a glimpse inside of him, too. It was such a revolting, frightening thought that he was glad that everyone who’d ever been there was dead.

But he also thought it might be worth a few minutes’ careful thought to figure out how and why he’d been able to keep every single delicious second of his dinners with Han and Finn’s hesitant smile and the light in Rey’s eyes — a secret.

Oh, he hadn’t had a secret in years. It should have been like a stone, dragging him down, but it elevated him up off his creaking knees and all the way through class and across campus and up to his apartment, his beautiful soulless luxurious apartment. He was already so much stronger than he’d ever dared to hope.


	4. A Finnterlude

“Did he write back yet?”

Rey was lying on her back on Finn’s bed, holding her phone over her head and taking selfies.

Finn looked up from the computer where he was playing StarCraft and answered, in a voice which suggested that it was not at all important, “No, not yet.”

“He’s a busy man,” Rey said, rolling over onto her stomach. She flipped through the pictures she’d taken, deleting all of the ones she hated, and realized that she’d deleted all of them.

“Yeah,” Finn agreed, clicking frantically.

“Just ask him out to dinner the next time you talk to him,” Rey said.

“Rey, I don’t even know if he’s into men.”

“Well… You’d better find out, then? If he’s not, there’s no sense in pining over him.”

“Wow, what good advice,” Finn said. “I’ll just get right on that.”

“Good,” Rey said, smiling her little self-satisfied smile (that smile was, Finn thought, somehow adorable and not aggravating). She’d completely missed his sarcasm. “Even though he’s dreamy and you admire him, he’s not the sun. You are.”

“ _Don’t_ quote _Grey’s Anatomy_ at me.”

“I was loosely paraphrasing,” she said defensively. “And it’s fitting. You’re handsome and a lovely person, Finn. You deserve someone who makes you a priority, who makes you happy.”

Rey had become a fan of several soaps that played at the gym while she was running, on the rowing machine, lifting, defeating gorillas in unarmed combat… The last time Finn checked, she could deadlift about 180 pounds. An inspiration, although Finn was by no means tempted to attempt the same feat. Whenever she conned him into working out, he’d wear his neon green sweatband and matching shorts (his shoes had a lime green stripe, too) and futz around on the stair-stepper until it was time for a peanut butter protein shake. (Yum!)

The worst was when Rey strained her back and had to take a few days off. She insisted on walking Finn through her regimen, like she was somehow going to forget everything in the next week. When he finally got back to his dorm room the first night, it seemed like every single muscle in his body was trembling. The next morning, when he woke up in agony and texted Rey that he was skipping class, she sent him a snapchat of herself rolling her eyes, brought over some Tiger Balm, and admonished him about not stretching.

Sometimes there were guys at the gym with incredibly built bodies — the kind of guy with big enough pectorals to fill out a training bra. Finn wasn’t interested, but seeing the vast expanses of skin their shirts sometimes exposed called to mind the one time he’d gone to the beach with Poe Dameron. Poe didn’t have big showy beefy muscles, but he was quite fit and moved with a kind of confidence and grace that kept catching Finn’s eye. It was embarrassing: he was staring, and Dameron was observant enough to notice. He was also kind enough not to call Finn out or tease him. Of course, the man was rakishly handsome and wearing skintight swim briefs; he was catching a lot of eyes.

But that was a long time ago, now. And it had taken Poe three weeks to respond to Finn’s last text, so Finn thought, I’ve got to respond right now while he’s still got his phone, so he sent back some nonsense about his midterms and Rey and the flight lessons with Han Solo and how long and terrible winter was.

And then Poe didn’t respond.

Was it because Finn had written something boring? Maybe it sounded like he had so much going on that he didn’t need Poe’s pity friendship any more. _Fuck_.

“Let me see your phone,” Rey said, stretching her arm out towards Finn.

He sighed, tapped in his passcode, and then threw the phone over to her. For a second, it looked like the throw was too weak and the phone was going to fall, and then, somehow, it was in Rey’s hand. He saw her swallow. She scrolled through his chats nonchalantly. There was something so off about the moment that he didn’t immediately freak when he saw her start typing. He lifted off of his chair slightly to see what she was doing and caught sight of the words “Poe Dameron” at the top of the screen. He threw himself at her, yowling.

She was cackling when she curled into a ball, protecting the phone from his grasp.

When he finally got his phone back, all she’d written was “Let’s get dinner when you’re here.”

“That’s not - it’s not damning,” Finn mused. “Dinner happens all the time. I eat dinner every day. Anyone can do it.”

“Yes,” Rey agreed. “You’ll just have to see what he reads into it.”

Finn suddenly saw himself at a table with a linen tablecloth and a candle, his approximation of a nice restaurant, and Poe wearing a suit and a very serious, gentle expression: “I’m sorry, Finn, I hope I haven’t led you on.” Is that something he would say? He might say that.

Finn gave up on his game and bundled up to accompany Rey to the library. He wore Poe’s jacket and a scarf and kept his hands buried in his pockets all the way there, because he still hadn’t taken the time to buy gloves.

They were quiet, lost in their own thoughts.  
  
—  
  
At the library, Rey was the one who noticed Kylo Ren. He was sitting with a bearded ginger and a perky blonde. The blonde noticed them first and narrowed her eyes at Rey. When Rey called out his name, Kylo straightened up and turned to look at her as well, some mysterious emotion on his face. The redhead didn’t seem to care about anything except the slice of carrot cake he was pecking at.

Introductions: Rey, Finn, Phasma, Hux. Some hallooing, hand shaking, grimacing. Hux looked disgruntled, switching his gaze from Finn to Rey to Kylo, back to Rey, then back at Kylo, who was still staring at Rey.

Phasma was, too. “You’re on the crew team, right?” Phasma asked. When Rey nodded, she went on, “I keep track of promising athletes.”  

“You’re not on the team,” Rey said. Her voice was flat; not a question. Finn wondered how Phasma had somehow rubbed his friend the wrong way already.

“No,” Phasma said, waving a hand, “We’re not competition.” And then she smiled, so feral it made Finn want exit, stage left.

Rey just went “huh” and turned back to Kylo. “Are you going to come flying with us some time?”

Kylo threw this almost guilty look over his shoulder, and Finn watched Phasma and Hux both prick up their ears.

“One of these days,” Kylo said, and he sounded totally calm and composed. “I’ve got a lot on my mind lately. What’d you think of midterms?”

Finn was not even a part of this. No one cared about talking to him, so he could just watch. Normally, he’d be kinda hurt, but he actually found himself wishing that Rey hadn’t spotted Kylo Ren, or that they’d gone to the graduate library instead. The dynamics were weird, wrong. There was something about Phasma that was sort of familiar, but she certainly didn’t recognize or care about _him_ , and he couldn’t figure out who she might be. Her gaze was mostly on Rey, assessing. She was just so _predatory_. Meanwhile, Finn was pretty sure that he stared at Poe the way that this Hux kid was watching Kylo. But Kylo didn’t seem to notice, and he didn’t even try to bring the others into the conversation. For a group of people who should pretty easily all be friends, there wasn’t much warmth here.

And, although Finn was hardly an expert on families, he thought it was kind of odd that Kylo seemed a lot more tense and formal around his friends than he was at dinner with his dad.

Maybe it’s because they were drinking, Finn reflected.

He stopped analyzing then because his phone vibrated. It startled him, but no one was paying attention, so they didn’t laugh at him for jumping. Pretty much everyone who had his number was here, so…  
It was from Poe.

Finn’s fingers were clumsy as he tried to unlock his phone five minutes ago. Short, compared to the small novel Finn sent, just one lonely little bubble. It read: _Sorry for being incommunicado so long. I want to see you too. Talk soon_

\--the end, no final punctuation.

Finn’s heart fluttered. He could feel blood rushing to his face, and then he felt a different kind of heat, and he knew that Kylo would be looking at him before he even dragged his eyes away from the screen.

Kylo had one eyebrow quirked. “Bad news?” He asked like he was amused.

“Just — news,” Finn said, trying to smooth out his expression. He wanted to go somewhere quiet (which was the point of coming to a library, was it not?) and try to figure out if he was happy.  
  
—  
  
When the freshmen left, Kylo looked from Phasma to Hux.

“Flying lessons?” Hux inquired.

“How do you know her?” Phasma asked at the same time, jerking her head over her shoulder in the direction Rey and Finn had gone.

“It’s a long story,” Kylo said. “I used them as cover for a mission. Just a bit of,” and he made a vague gesture at his head, like he did something to their minds.

“I wonder if she would be a good candidate,” Phasma said.

She had already recruited a few of the athletes she was “keeping track of,” Kylo knew. She started out with some story about a team tough mudder with a five thousand dollar prize, had Kylo come and feel them out during training. A lot of the kids were too smart or too career-oriented already; they weren’t open to direction, mental manipulation disturbed them, and the things Phasma could promise didn’t seem at all appealing in comparison to their own plans. Of course, there were the ones with no plans, just a kind of creeping fear about the future, about their bodies decaying out from under them, about what they were supposed to do next. If they were easily swayed, they were perfect candidates, and the indoctrination began. But some of them were so _hungry_ , so eager to pounce on any scrap of power...

There was this one guy who'd grown up poor and angry at the world, and climbing into his mind was like dropping into a raging river. It simply swept Kylo away. He'd nixed the kid and spent the rest of his evening trying to sharpen up his boundaries, to remind himself where he ended and the rest of the world began. He also ate a pint of ice cream and went to bed with a tummy ache. Anything was better than thinking about how _that was Kylo_ , _that is who I was, too_. Easy prey.   
  
“Well, this was lovely,” Hux said, “But I’ve got to work on a group project for 510.” He tended to refer to his courses by their numbers, which meant that Phasma and Kylo never knew what he was talking about. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He was looking at Kylo.

“Ooooh,” Phasma cooed, waggling her eyebrows.  
  
Hux glared. “This is serious business.”  
  
“Okay, okay,” she said, raising her hands, but she couldn’t stop from grinning. She slid off her chair and pulled the strap of her gym bag over her shoulder. “No rest for the wicked,” she said, emphasizing her point with finger guns. She probably had her martial arts group tonight, Kylo thought. He hadn’t memorized her schedule, but he was getting a strong mental impression of groin kicks and chopping someone in the neck.  
  
They were already outside by the time Hux had finished stuffing folders into his messenger bag. He’d made a big show of checking his phone and flicking through emails, too, which might have been meant to make a point to Kylo that he wasn’t top priority, but really it just looked more like Hux was stalling.  
  
“What is it?” Kylo finally asked, mildly irked that his impatience made him cave.  
  
“I’m doing a set Friday night,” Hux said finally.  
  
They were walking across the campus toward where Kylo had parked his bike. It was starting to get dark, so the street lamps along the path had turned on, and the temperature had gone down by several degrees. He assumed that Hux was going to just turn around and walk back to the library once they finished talking, which seemed inefficient. There wind whipped through Hux’s carefully groomed hair.  
  
“A show?” Kylo echoed.  
  
“STARKILLER,” Hux snapped. “Don’t you ever listen? My, you know, when I DJ.”  
  
“Oh, that’s right.”  
  
Every now and then, Hux invited Kylo to go somewhere with him. Art galleries, parks, an arboretum, a new place that served elaborate, boozy milkshakes, some small venue with a band Kylo had never heard of, a whole host of similar hipster nonsense. There was always some weird excuse: Hux wanted to capture a specific sound for one of his mixes or he thought he’d found a good backdrop and he wanted Kylo to take the pictures or something like that. Kylo was even following Hux on Instagram, but he rarely signed in and certainly never liked or even looked at anyone’s photos, so he’d always assumed that he was indulging some kind of elaborate inner fantasy Hux had crafted for himself.  
  
“At Mobile Ice Planet,” Hux said, and then, seeing the look on Kylo’s face, “The nightclub.”  
  
“Is it any good?”  
  
Kylo was genuinely curious, but the question made Hux bristle. “Do you think they’d pay me if it weren’t?”  
  
“Not your music,” Kylo said dismissively, “This club.”  
  
“Oh,” Hux said, “I always think you’ll know more than you do.”  
  
“Kriff you,” Kylo said, but there was no edge in his voice. “They’re paying you?”  
  
“I don’t even want you to come any more,” Hux huffed.  
  
“Why’s it called Mobile Ice Planet?”  
  
“How should I bloody know?”  
  
Whenever Hux got frustrated, his whole face flushed red. Provoking him was one of Kylo’s favorite things. Right now, he was like a beet up to the tips of his ears. It made Kylo kind of want to pinch his cheeks.  
  
They walked in silence for a few minutes, Hux occasionally taking sips of his coffee.  
  
“Give me the address and time,” Kylo Ren said, coming to a halt by his bike.  
  
“Maybe I’ll text you,” Hux muttered, scuffing his boots on the sidewalk and sulking.  
  
Kylo relented. “Do you want a ride?”  
  
“Oh, yes,” Hux said, perking up immediately.  
  
As usual, when he got on behind Kylo, Hux put his hands on Kylo’s shoulders. Kylo hesitated before putting his helmet on and said, “You’re already riding bitch. It’s not more gay if you hold me, fucker.”  
  
The helmet muffled Hux’s cursing, but Kylo Ren felt arms encircle his waist, and as soon as he revved the engine, Hux’s grip tightened and he pressed his head into Kylo’s back. Maybe Kylo would give Hux a helmet for his birthday; the fool didn’t understand the Force — or he underestimated Kylo Ren’s strength — and so he was always frightened. A scared child.  
  
Maybe he was trying to prove something. He never said no when Kylo offered.  
  
—  
  
“What else could that possibly mean except that _he wants to see you_?”  
  
Rey was clearly exasperated.  
  
“Well, whenever I did something wrong, someone always wanted to see me,” Finn grumbled. “I can’t hear his tone through the text, okay?” He frowned at his phone. “Should I write back?”  
  
“No,” Rey said, shaking her head decisively. “He’s going to get in touch with you. Something must be going on, Finn. When he can, he’ll call or something. Don’t worry, you’ll hear from him again.”  
  
“You’re right,” Finn said, and put the phone back in his pocket.  
  
“Thank you,” Rey said primly, and went back to highlighting her notes. She was very organized and quickly developed a routine after they’d arrived at school; her grades were all excellent, whereas Finn was kind of all over the map. He usually went to class and didn’t fall asleep, unless he was in one of those big lectures with three hundred students and no one even expected him to try.  
  
It was something he couldn’t think about too much, because on top of her assignments, Rey also had practice at 6 in the morning, and he was pretty sure that she spent extra afternoons with Han Solo, improving her flight skills or looking at diagrams of electrical wiring or walking Chewy, plus her extra workouts. She’d also salvaged some computer parts from god knows where and built herself a computer that was better than Finn’s in every aspect except aesthetically. And he had no idea how long it took to do her hair like that.  
  
Meanwhile, he was eating hot Cheetos and becoming an expert on Spike Lee’s filmography.  
  
It takes all kinds, he told himself. And there’s nothing wrong with appreciating art.  
  
Finn lay his head down on the table and said, “I’m cool. This is great.”  
  
He could have heard Rey’s eyes roll if he were halfway across the room, but after she slammed her binder shut, her voice was surprisingly gentle when she spoke. “You said when you did something wrong, someone wanted to see you.”  
  
Finn nodded, rubbing his face across the table.  
  
“Where were you, before? Who wanted to see you?” When Finn remained silent for a while, she said, “I’m prying. You don’t owe me anything.”  
  
Finn finally sat back up. They weren’t in one of the groups of tables, where ten or twenty students sit and type and read and listen to headphones just loudly enough that everyone else is listening, too. They were in a room Rey had reserved, which she did every Tuesday, but this week she didn’t have any group projects or presentations to practice, so it wasn’t weird for Finn to tag along. Et voilà, they were in a nice, quiet, private space. He steepled his fingers, then balanced his chin on his fingertips and pursed his lips, and after that he inspected the ceiling, in case they were in any danger of it caving in and crushing them.  
  
“I was adopted,” he said. “And I grew up in Pasadena. With five other kids, we were all adopted. And they trained us.”  
  
Rey waited for him to go on.  
  
“It was a weird commune and the government was keeping us under surveillance.” He shrugged. He had been planning to let it all loose, to share everything with Rey, but as soon as his story started, he could feel his heartbeat like a cage, the room filled with the sound of blood coursing through his veins. He met Rey after he started over, and if he wanted to keep her around, he was going to have to keep the past locked down. “So that’s how I met Poe Dameron. What about you? You hot-wired the Millennium Falcon, how did you learn how to do that?”  
  
“Oh, I grew up in the desert,” Rey said, with the kind of wistful expression a gardener might have before saying, “ _There used to be so many bees in the world_ ,” but what she actually said was, “And I had no one.”  
  
“Man, we didn’t do the whole childhood thing right,” Finn said.  
  
—  
  
Finn didn’t see the prisoner for a few days, but everyone was whispering, trying to figure out who it might be. They had a lot of enemies; could be a politician, a military figure, a celebrity, some evangelical type who’d denounced them, or maybe it was someone who’d defected and spoken out in public against the First Order. Traitors were punished harshly. Finn had personally seen the man in the black mask squeeze the breath out of an old man’s lungs, after which Finn’s unit was supposed to execute a few families.  
  
Finn raised his gun, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. He ejected his unspent ammo later, left it back with the carnage, but he knew it was a poor effort. Even without being able to see the man’s eyes, Finn felt like the man in black had looked right through him, had seen him, all of the thoughts and feelings inside of Finn, everything that made him… FN-2187.  
  
The man in black had been there, in their compound, interrogating the prisoner. There was no screaming, just the quiet rustling of fabric as the man stalked out. He had something more important to attend to. He didn’t look at Finn once, but Finn’s commanding officer, the man he’d so very briefly thought of as “Dad,” pulled Finn aside from the evening nutritional supplement and said, “After we’ve finished extracting information, you’re going to terminate the prisoner.”  
  
His commander didn’t elaborate, but it must have been the man in black, Finn thought. He had seen the weakness in Finn’s heart, and now Finn would have to prove himself. While they were still interrogating, it was Finn’s task to go out back and dig a grave. He did as he was ordered, sweating in his heavy body armor, and eventually the motions became so automatic that his mind drifted off. Even when he hadn’t shot those families, he was still a part of it. He didn’t save them. Could he do it? Could he look someone in the face and shoot?  
  
Was there any other choice?  
  
When Finn snuck into the laundry room later that night, the guards in the kitchen simply nodding at him though he was supposed to be asleep, he was wearing his V for Vendetta mask and carrying an M15, but he wasn’t aiming it at Poe Dameron. Poe’s head lolled to the side and one of his eyes was swollen shut, fresh blood still glistening on his wounded temple. He looked like he was really struggling to focus on Finn’s face.  
“…Hi,” Finn said, after an extended silence, pushing his mask up. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the seen the light, y'all. By which I mean that this will now include some Kylo/Hux. Stay trashy ;)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> —  
> I've been upside down  
> I don't wanna be the right way round  
> Can't find paradise on the ground  
> —

 

 

 

After dropping Hux off, Kylo zipped back home. It was a relief to be inside of his apartment, warm and solitary. He set his keys on the counter and stepped out of his motorcycle boots, black, with thick soles and steel toes, after loosening the laces. He’d heard an urban legend about someone wearing steel toe boots and getting stepped on by a horse, somehow causing the steel plate to slice off his toes. Whether it was true or not, Kylo hadn’t seen a live horse in decades, so he figured there were other things he should worry about first.  
  
He was well into an assignment on modeling processes, _Cantus Arcticus_ by Einojuhani Rautavaara playing (The Bog: “Think of autumn and of Tchaikovsky”), when he received a series of texts from Phasma.  
  
_if ur mad at someone for benching more than u maybe u should sit down_  
  
_he tried to hit me can u send a cleaner_  
  
_[a pin dropped on a map]_  
  
_god damit_  
  
_I appreciate you Kylo_  
  
_I’m bringing wine c u in 20_  
  
_pink moscato y/y_  
  
Kylo exhaled loudly, dragging his hands down his face. He dialed his guy and they spoke briefly, negotiating a price through a non-incriminating conversation seemingly about purchasing and delivering a cake.  
  
When Phasma arrived, her cheeks were flushed from the cold. “Is Hux here?” she asked, peering around Kylo. “I forgot, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Forgot what?” he asked, frowning as he ushered her inside. “He’s in the geology building doing something with a group, I think, not that it matters. What happened?”  
  
Phasma exploded into a story about an argument with her training partner escalating into him attempting to wallop her upside the head with a 45 pound weight. While she was talking, Kylo got some glasses out of the cupboard and poured for both of them. They were sitting at the island in the kitchen on his thousand dollar Arne Jacobsen bar stools in, unsurprisingly, black.  “I mean, really, what was he thinking? If it upsets him that I’m stronger than he is, why would he challenge me to a _fight_? So stupid,” she said.  
  
“Well, he learned his lesson,” Kylo said, pouring himself another glass of Moscato. There was no point in mentioning what it was going to cost _him_ , considering that Seamus hated going out in the cold even more than he hated last minute jobs in heavily populated areas.  
  
“I’m going to give my troops a lecture about emotional regulation,” Phasma said. “It’s a very important skill for maintaining a professional work environment. Can you help me pick a template?”  
  
“Honestly, I don’t think they love your PowerPoints. Even when you let Hux pick the fonts.”  
  
“There’s no need to get nasty. I’m not trying to criticize you,” Phasma said, “Sometimes you’ve got to smash some stuff, choke some guys. I get it, you’re different from us.” She tossed back her whole glass in one slug and set it down hard, forgetting that she was drinking out of one of Kylo’s nice champagne flutes. “Whoops,” she said, looking down at the broken stem.  
  
“That’s fine,” Kylo said, willing himself to be calm. “I’ll just get some paper towels. Don’t touch anything.”  
  
He brushed the shards of glass off the counter and into a plastic bag, and then he swept up the floor. For whatever reason, tonight it felt good to carry out these mundane tasks with his own two hands.  
  
“I’ve never—” Phasma paused. “You know, when we kill people, it’s for the First Order. It’s never personal. Do you think cops are gonna come after me?”  
  
“Probably not, and if they do, let me handle it.” He felt like he should reach out to Phasma, physically, pat her on the shoulder or pull her into a hug or something, but his body didn’t want to cooperate. If he could understand Phasma’s state of mind, that might help him figure out what she needed, but she was in turmoil, her thoughts clouded.  
  
She had to pace around for a while, picking up some of his tchotchkes and putting them back in slightly the wrong place. Eventually, she turned on the TV and started watching _The Walking Dead_ while Kylo made a stir fry from a Trader Joe’s frozen mix. It was one of the few things he found difficult to fuck up. He offered some buttermilk frozen yogurt afterwards (Jeni’s, lemon  & blueberries), and Phasma had the gall to complain that he didn’t have any fun toppings.  
  
_Not so_. But the whipped cream was for special occasions.

—

  
  
The Supreme Leader wanted him to make an example of two men who served the First Order primarily as weapon suppliers. Evidence, and an ensuing investigation, showed that they were not truly committed to the cause; the men were procuring low quality materiel and pocketing the savings. Hux was the one who’d determined what was going on, according to Snoke. Kylo was surprised, not in the least because he hadn’t heard any gloating, and he was even more uncertain why this was his responsibility and not Hux’s or Phasma’s.  
  
“You must do something that no normal man can do,” Snoke said, sensing Kylo Ren’s question. “You must show them what we are capable of and why we must be feared.”  
  
Snoke's voice was patronizing, as if Kylo Ren were a slow child. But he didn’t give any more information, which left Kylo to determine an appropriate punishment on his own. He did not like these assignments; they were always tests. What had he done this time, to cause Snoke to feel that he needed to be tested? Could he sense the lingering warmth of Finn's briefly-held hand, or had Hux been blabbing about the freshmen who ran over to talk to Kylo Ren like a common friend? Did he wonder what plan Kylo Ren was capable of devising? Would his solution be too simple, too obvious, inadequate? There were times when Kylo was aware that he didn’t know what he didn’t know. He was just fumbling around in the darkness, a child. It was almost as painful as the sharp disgust and shame he felt immediately after his pride spiked at Snoke's praise. In those moments, he was little more than a dog, well trained, eager to please. Whenever he began to think that way, he reminded himself of their mission, of the power he held over others.  
  
In his weakest moments, he disappeared into the secret room in his apartment and sat with his grandfather’s helmet, his spirit, and asked for counsel.  
  
He thanked his grandfather for the plan he finally settled on; the men were discovered in their own homes, suicide letters spotted with blood. Security footage might have revealed the tall, black-clad shadow, with a small pale oval face, behind both men as they made their fatal purchases - but there was no investigation, for the letters were shown to be authentic, and there was no suggestion that they had been written under duress. He stood with them, hands clasped, expression severe, as they drank poison. He’d been sitting with them when they wrote the letters, asking them in a quiet, gentle way if they knew that what they had done was wrong. They’d been grateful to him for offering them forgiveness and absolution.  
  
He wasn’t just showing mercy, it was an act of kindness.  
  
He wondered if he could have done it, like those men, their hands not even trembling. The first one had been draining, because he wasn’t certain he could pull it off. It required a kind of finesse, constantly pressuring the man without making him crack. When it was finished, Kylo gasped deeply, like he was drawing breath for the first time after almost drowning. With the second man, while more confident, he was not impatient. He felt, rather, a deep sense of loss, and found himself wishing that this could be avoided, that the man could be spared.  
  
But it was a better, a more dignified death than one following hours of torture.  
  
When he went home, he collapsed on his couch. His body felt like it was lined with lead, and every motion was a monumental effort, his heavy limbs swimming through the immense weight of the Force around him. It was one of those times when his vision was reduced to a distant pinprick of light, as if he were sitting in a dark paper dome and someone had, far away, pierced the fragile shell. It was the sense that he was weak and blind, crawling like an infant. He couldn’t bear to spend time with his grandfather’s memory, ashamed and degraded as he was.  
  
It was confounding. He had done as he was ordered. He should have been buoyed up by his success, reaffirmed. Instead, he was trapped here in despair, too weary even to throw a temper tantrum (those sometimes improved his mood). Listless, he never left the couch; he spent the night tossing and turning and woke up with his shoes still on, his entire body drenched with sweat underneath his heavy clothes. His faced looked even more pale than usual in the mirror, bloodless, and there were dark hollows underneath his eyes.  
  
He skipped class, spent the morning with cold tea bags and then cucumbers on his eyes, finally rinsing with cotton balls soaked in rose water. And then he meditated for a while, attempting to calm the storm inside of himself. He would have to report to Snoke, and no trace could remain of this.  
  
Predictably, Hux texted him about being absent; he’d made up an excuse to the professor on Kylo’s behalf, but the professor was not impressed.  
  
_It should matter to me_ , he thought. If his GPA dropped, he wouldn’t be a competitive candidate for the top tier law schools, for one thing. It was hard to take that seriously, though. Hard to take anything seriously in a world where he could calmly kill two men and then go back to his expensive apartment, safe in the knowledge that even if someone _did_ come to question him, he could easily compel them to… what? What if he just killed every single person he saw, all day every day, until he’d cut a swath so wide he’d have to move to another city to have a conversation?  
  
He didn’t want to, but it had simply never occurred to him before that he could. The whole world, which still seemed to be entirely real and tangible, had also acquired a ghostly presentiment: everything he touched he could turn to cinders and ash, all things before him equally meaningless. There was nothing left to accomplish, no reason to strive. He was staring into the void.  
  
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, his eyes wide and his hair in a disarray. He was freaking out, hardcore wholesale just straight up losing his mind. There was blood leaking from his nose. He dabbed at it with his fingers and then his sleeves, not caring that the stains would probably be impossible to get out (even though he was wearing a nice cashmere sweater).  
  
There was something Uncle Luke had taught him. It drew on the Light, but not so extremely so that he thought he would be at any risk of losing himself… Though he was feeling the pull more than usual, these days. It was simple: let go of the moment, of everything except for the Force, the way that it moved in him and around him. He became aware of everyone in the building, everyone on the block, but their feelings, and his own emotional riot, washed over him like waves on a long shore. He was eternal, immutable, unmoved. He centered himself.  
  
And then he went online and bought himself a glow-in-the-dark star chart wall tapestry, and then he got dressed and went to Snoke’s office.

  
—

  
The rest of the week was a blur.

Snoke seemed pleased, but suspicious. He thought Kylo’s method was appropriately sinister, inexplicable. Devastating for anyone who’d loved either of the men. Snoke made some suggestions, but his usual aura of regal menace seemed somewhat subdued. It wasn’t their most memorable conversation.  
  
Still drifting, Kylo wandered over to the professor’s office. It wasn’t even worth pretending to have a conversation. “You understand that I am always absent for good reasons. You will not question me. You believe that I have a bright future.”  
  
The poor woman, with no defenses, repeated everything he said. After a moment of quiet, she emerged from her trance with a smile. “I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better, Kylo,” she said.  
  
“Thank you for being so understanding,” he said, and left.  
  
He caught up to Hux at a small café off campus. He barely registered that Hux was wearing a little barista smock; he’d just been sorting through all the threads in the vicinity, and followed the one that led to Hux.  
  
“I can’t talk now,” Hux said in a furious whisper, eyes narrowed.  
  
He was _humiliated_ , Kylo could feel. “I just wanted to thank you for talking to the professor,” Kylo said. “I talked to her, too. It’s fine now.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” Hux said, looking over his shoulder, and then he went on loudly, “What can I get for you today?”  
  
“Umm,” Kylo said, realizing that he hadn’t eaten in over twelve hours. “Let me look.” He stepped to the side, letting another customer place an order while he eyed everything in the display case. He settled on a sesame seed bagel with regular cream cheese, lightly toasted, and one of the cups already filled with OJ and jammed into a bucket of ice. Hux served him quickly and rang it up efficiently, handing him his change with a smile that probably few other people would have realized wasn’t genuine. Kylo dropped all of the change, which, since it was from a $20, was considerable, into the tip jar.  
  
It made Hux more miserable, unfathomably.  
  
Kylo sat at a table where he could lean his head against the wall. He wasn’t going to fall asleep, but he was exhausted. All of the serenity he’d found earlier was draining away, leaving him on the edge of the black abyss he’d faced before. Eating the bagel sort of helped. It was okay, as far as bagels went. He wasn’t a connoisseur by any means; he probably would usually choose a muffin over a bagel, but considering the day he was having, it wasn’t surprising that he wasn’t quite himself.  
  
Hold up. Black abyss: was that merely a metaphor? Supposing he just let himself go, took the leap, would that really be so bad? He had an image of himself just… surrendering, giving himself to the Dark Side. After years of meticulous, painful training, perfecting breathing techniques, standing under freezing cold water in a cavern for hours while trying to meditate, mental flaying, headaches, sleepless nights, pretending that he wasn't crying in the shower… Had he found it, what he was looking for? Was it so simple?  
  
And if it were, why hadn’t he already let go?  
  
Hux sat down heavily across from him and picked up his cup, drinking some of his juice right from the same straw!  
  
“In some cultures we’re married now,” Kylo said gravely.  
  
“Why are you here?” Hux asked, in that same furious whisper. “God, I wish there were vodka in this.”  
  
“I was looking for you,” Kylo answered. “I didn’t realize you wouldn’t want me here?” His voice went up at the end, involuntarily, because he felt like he was walking into some kind of soap opera conversation about feelings. Odious.  
  
“You don’t have to work to eat,” Hux said viciously.  
  
It was true: Kylo had nice things because of his investments, Leia’s idea first — in part to protect some of the family’s money from Han Solo’s irresponsible financial decisions, i.e. gambling and smuggling drugs in and out of Miami in his little private plane, _hello_ the year of Ben doesn't have a daddy. Snoke had later deposited huge sums into Kylo’s accounts, with the understanding that Kylo could live comfortably but that he must leave much of the money untouched. Of course, with his particular gifts, it was easy enough to forge lucrative relationships with various financial advisors, and he was able to deposit that income into private accounts. As they say, money makes money.  
  
“Snoke doesn’t pay you?” Kylo asked stupidly.  
  
“My rent — look, it’s none of your fucking business.”  
  
Imagine: a Hux who could play it cool, who saw Kylo Ren walk in and plastered a big shit-eating grin on his stupid face and made Kylo feel like he was welcome here any time, a Hux who had some chill.  
  
“I took care of some traitors for you," Kylo said. Why "for you"? It was for the First Order, for Snoke. Was that kind of language meant to somehow placate Hux? He couldn’t deal with this right now. A part of him had hoped to share everything with Hux, to ask for Hux’s advice, but now he came to his senses. They were in a public place, surrounded by ears; now was the wrong time to try to pet Hux's ego, whether with confessions of Kylo's own weakness or the suggestion that Hux might have advice worth hearing. “I just thought I’d let you know in person, but I see now that this is the wrong place to talk.” He started to say, “You didn’t see me,” and Hux interrupted him.  
  
“Don’t play with me,” Hux said. Inconceivably, his level of being upset was entirely off the charts now. “No mind tricks.” If he started crying, Kylo was going to barf.  
  
“Everyone’s staring at us,” Kylo said, as he realized it was so.  
  
“They think they’re watching a big gay break up,” Hux said, finally reclaiming his composure.  
  
“ **Stop** ,” Kylo said, to everyone in the room, and they all looked at their own food and frappuccinos and forgot about him and Hux.  
  
“Thank you,” Hux said with a sigh. Then, looking slightly alarmed, “Your nose is bleeding!”  
  
“I’m just going to go.” Kylo stood, pressing a paper napkin to his face.  
  
When he remembered to check his phone, later, he saw that Hux had sent some information about his stupid event. An apology? 

Kylo tried some milk oolong for the first time, an odd flavor from Taiwan that he’d ordered out of curiosity. It was better than he expected, the flavor very delicate. It seemed like a nice breakfast tea, he decided. He took a long, hot shower, and lay down across his bed on his towel, taking some time to carefully apply pressure through the Force to his muscles in places where he felt knots and whorls of trapped energy.  
  
Finally, exhausted, he dropped off.

  
—

  
Kylo Ren was on maybe his seventh drink. They had this special, the “cosmic cocktail” or something. It was really just jungle juice, but, containing tonic water, it glowed under the club’s blacklight. It looked like melted dolphin unicorns, Kylo decided, holding his glass up. Seven? That was too much, probably.  
  
He was wearing skinny jeans (black) with a nice shirt (black) and a sweater that went down to his knees (black). He hadn’t bundled up because he’d called a cab from his building and assumed that he was going to do the same to get back. Yes, Hux looked very nice up on his little elevated platform, with his hair slicked back and his weird red beard (weird because it was a real full beard, which Kylo had not really expected). Kylo couldn’t identify discrete songs (he definitely heard “bitch better have my money,” after one dirty drop), but it was all the kind of noise that made you want to move. Unless you were holding a drink.  
  
“What is that?” Some girl was shrieking in his ear.  
  
“Aurora jungle juice,” he said. So this one he was holding, was it number seven or actually number eight? He was confused. Maybe he should not drink it? He could give it to this girl. But he had already paid for it and it was all covered in his fingerprints and maybe there was some backwash in there, so really it was his responsibility to drink this drink.    
  
He didn’t have to make any tough choices: the girl leaned over him and ordered one more for each of them.  
  
They were talking about something, maybe snapchat filters, when Hux physically pushed the girl away. Kylo hadn’t even seen or felt him approaching, though he’d been vaguely aware that the music was different.  
  
“Go away,” Hux said. The girl gaped at him. “His father just died, now’s not a good time for him to meet people.” Hux put a kind of protective arm over Kylo’s shoulders as he said this.  
  
The thought of Han Solo being dead caused a bubble of hilarity to rise in Kylo’s chest. He could hear himself laughing, a sort of hysterical noise. The girl winced, looking from Kylo to Hux and back.  
  
“I’m really sorry. Bye, then,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind one of her ears and melting into the crowd. Or maybe she’d said “Bye, Ben.”  
  
“Look,” Kylo said, holding his new glass up in front of Hux’s face. “Isn’t this fun?”  
  
“Have you just been drinking the entire time?” Hux’s voice was waspish. Something else Kylo hadn’t noticed: Hux steering him into a quieter area; it was easy to hear him speaking, here. There were curtains, and some speakers and an old drum set. “I was - did you even pay attention to me?”  
  
“You were great, Starkiller,” Kylo said, feeling happier and more peaceful than he had in a long time, even though he kept spilling his drink on his nice shoes.  
  
“Put that down,” Hux said, “You’re making a mess.”  
  
“You’re not my mom,” was Kylo’s witty response, delivered with a sly grin.  
  
“Bollocks,” Hux said, “I don’t know why I brought you here.”  
  
“Because of my nice hair,” Kylo suggested, running the fingers of his free hand through his luxurious mane. “You should have some space juice too, it’s fucking me up.”  
  
“I’ll have you know that three people bought me shots,” Hux said, his voice all high-pitched and spots of red appearing on his cheeks. “If you were paying attention, maybe you would have noticed.”  
  
“The tequila was from me, you ungrateful bastard.”  
  
“Oh.” Hux’s posture relaxed a little. “Well, that was nice of you. Surprisingly nice.”  
  
“Do you think I'd lie to spare your feelings? I said you were great, you were great. I had to hold drinks so I wouldn't start dancing. I always make a fool of myself when I try to dance.” He did a little shimmy, à la Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman-Huey Lewis dance.   
  
Hux wheeled around and walked away, and it sounded like he’d said “fuck it” as he went.  
  
Before Kylo really even had time to register that Hux was a huge bummer, the man was back, holding two shot glasses that seemed to be full of blood and maybe, like, mouthwash and foam on top, which took Kylo’s brain on this weird journey into a world where dentists sold their medical waste to sickos looking for kicks.  
  
“Alien brain hemorrhage,” Hux said, perhaps noticing that Kylo had been staring at his drink for like a solid two minutes, mouth slightly open, eyebrows furrowed. “There’s peach Schnapps and some other stuff. Some people think it's shite. I would have gotten one for you, but you’ve had enough. Cheers.”  
  
Kylo muttered something rude, but his heart wasn't in it. Speaking of brains, he felt like his was floating, disconnected from his body. He wasn’t reaching out through the Force, but he was picking something up, anyway. It could have been coming from anyone in the club, any of the men or women with their false eyelashes, new shoes, piercings, blue lipstick, black nail polish, carefully styled hair, hipbones, hungry eyes, everything is noise, credit cards, bad dreams, no future, fear lit up like neon. But really, it was coming from Hux. It was ambivalence, refusing to reach out and take what he wanted. An insecure mind scuttling around in an outward spiral, hoping for a sign. Trying to push everything so deep down that it'd wither and die, starved by neglect. Drink the Kool-Aid, don’t drink the Kool-Aid. He suddenly wanted to eat a metric shit ton of Chinese food.  
  
His voice came out unfamiliar, distant and disinterested, maybe coy, at least in his own mind. “So how long are you staying here?”  
  
“I’m all sweaty and shit,” Hux said, looking down at himself. He was wearing a grey shirt and tight black jeans, like Kylo's, looking younger than usual. He’d downed both shots while Kylo wasn’t paying attention, apparently, unless he poured them out or juggled them and then threw them at the ground, Opa!, whatever. Important: the glasses and their vile contents were gone, thank the lord. “I could go whenever. Why, are you tired?” Was Hux avoiding looking at him? He was thinking:  _does he_ _want to find that girl again, take her home?_ Wondering if that was something Ren did. The thoughts had a bitter flavor.  
  
“I’m hungry,” Kylo said.  
  
After that, he was aware of moments, bursts of images only loosely strung together, all dark around the edges. His feet following Hux, Hux’s feet, Hux looking cross, Hux grabbing Kylo by the elbow to keep him out of an intersection. Hux complaining about the cold and Kylo Ren pulling him close, wrapping a blanket of Force warmth around them, Hux stumbling in surprise. Stars above, the night sky, far away and heavily obscured by the city’s ugly, artificial lights, but still there, there for Kylo Ren only, there inside of him, the darkness and the cold. A bus rumbled past, cigarettes, exhale, smoke. Lungs crackled. Lanterns, a paper with information about the Chinese zodiac, a table covered in bowls of food. Hux’s lips where glistening with grease, his face flushed. Watching noodles disappear into his mouth was hypnotic.  
  
“What?” he asked, looking up at Kylo, “Are you going to be sick?”  
  
"We could go home together," Kylo said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I clearly don't know jack about being a DJ. Hux is hustling, tryna figure out his stage presence. some day he has to give a speech to the galaxy, right? 
> 
> one of the things I like about Kylo's character is his lack of personal control vs. how much power he has over others, so I wanted to mess around with that. also, Dark and Light, blah blah. oh gosh, you guys.
> 
> lyrics at the beginning from _all we do_ by oh wonder.


	6. a big man resigned to the sanctuary of his work

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gosh, I just saw _the last jedi_ and I'm rewatching _rogue one_ and feeling too sad to function. merry christmas!

Kylo Ren woke up with a splitting headache and a dry mouth. He rolled out of the bed, mentally taking stock: he’d apparently crawled out of what he was wearing the night before, switching into his zoo animal jammies (bottoms only; he was shirtless). Nothing was broken, except maybe his brain. He was already in his kitchen drinking a Gatorade, the refrigerator still open in front of him, when he realized that the TV was on.  
  
Hux was reclining on the sofa, wearing Kylo’s vintage Thundercats t-shirt and a pair of red-and-white plaid boxer shorts. “What,” Kylo croaked out, “Are you doing?”  
  
“Saturday morning cartoons,” Hux said cheerfully. “The best way to cure a hangover is to drink less.”  
  
“That’s a preventative measure, not a cure.” Kylo said lamely, knowing that he didn’t hold the high ground. “And you needed to wear my shirt because…?”  
  
“Someone in this room vomited on mine, and it wasn’t me.” Looking at him over the back of the couch, Hux paused and went on, in a more serious voice, “You should be more careful, Kylo. Someone like you can’t afford to lose control like that.”  
  
Kylo Ren raised his hand, focusing every ounce of his being into a viselike grip around Hux’s throat. Hux began to cough, and gave Kylo a deeply injured look. Through his own pain, Kylo registered _hurt angry helpless_.  
  
Not breaking eye contact, but hands white-knuckled where he was gripping the couch, Hux rasped: “You’re just making my point for me, prick.”  
  
Kylo Ren let his arm fall. “I’m sorry,” he said, not even begrudgingly, and he maneuvered himself carefully down onto the other end of the couch. Without looking, he shut all the bright, natural light out of the room with a simple flick of the wrist. “That was shitty.”  
  
Hux said something in response, but it didn’t penetrate the fog in Kylo’s mind. He found himself looking more closely at Hux’s hands, which he’d never really paid attention to before, for the obvious reason of not being insane (until now). He heard Hux’s voice again and looked up, an unfamiliar expression of concern on Hux’s face as he leaned in closer to Kylo.  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
That was Hux’s warm hand on his knee, the smell of Hux —  
  
Hux’s hand on the small of his back, then rubbing soothing circles between his shoulder blades as he knelt in front of the toilet —  
  
He was lying on his own bed, the room spinning, his mouth tasting like toothpaste, and Hux was crouching over him, shirtless. He heard himself saying “Armitage,” for some reason, and laughing, “Armitage, Armitage,” his hands in Hux’s hair, “Come down here.”  
  
Hux looked peeved. “Disgusting. A spectacle. You should be ashamed,” But his voice wasn’t cutting, and there was something affectionate about the way he was looking at Kylo, something that made Kylo’s stomach churn. More than anything, he wanted Hux to dip forward and brush his mouth over Kylo’s, to press kisses and little bites along Kylo’s neck and his collarbone, to feel the pressure of Hux’s fingers on his waistband, on his thighs. Or perhaps — the room was still spinning — perhaps these were Hux’s thoughts, Hux’s feelings, and the membrane between _Kylo Ren_ and _everything else_ had become so porous that he no longer knew his own mind.  
  
Kylo never used the Force to peer into Hux’s thoughts in any great detail, respecting the amateurish and clumsy walls Hux had attempted to construct around his mind, but he decided that the sharp desire, the gentle insistent sense of a chronic, dull yearning… were a mixture of his own feelings and Hux’s, staring down at a shirtless hot mess broad chest. It was because they had been drinking, and they were touching each other’s bare skin — he didn’t remember changing, and wondered how much Hux had seen, if Hux had had to help him, warm hands running over his torso and legs — and nothing more. A natural reaction to the situation, not to each other.  
  
“You’re too drunk, darling,” Hux murmured, laying himself down next to Kylo Ren, who began to trace shapes (protection sigils, auspicious symbols) across Hux’s bare skin. “I’d be taking advantage of you.” He rolled over to face Kylo, their foreheads touching, but did not offer even the most chaste kiss. Kylo Ren mumbled something unimportant, losing the battle to keep his eyes open.  
  
Even as Kylo felt sleep claiming him, curling into Hux’s body for warmth, his head jerked up and he was looking right into Hux’s eyes as they sat facing one another on the sofa, which had been handcrafted in Italy and was upholstered in black suede leather.    
  
“I’m fine,” Kylo said, his voice shrill, “I’ll wash your shirt.”  
  
Hux sat back down on his end of the couch, his face unreadable. They were almost the same height, although Kylo took some pride in the inches he held over Hux, who wore Kylo’s shirt just fine. Might as well give it to him, why not. Sorry for the shitshow. He felt like there was something else that he was missing, but it was so far out of reach, and he had such a bad hangover, that it simply wasn’t worth pursuing.  
  
“I’m going to eat leftovers, and then I’m gonna go buy some god damn fish,” Kylo said, leaning back on the couch with the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes. “Stay for breakfast,” he added, surprising even himself.  
  
—  
  
Finn hadn’t even really seen the name on the phone when he’d answered, and he’d almost dropped it when he heard Poe Dameron saying “Hey;” he was on campus running some errands anyway, so why not meet up? Finn and Rey had actually been walking across the snow sidewalk to their meeting place when he heard a familiar voice exclaim “Finn!” and felt himself smiling idiotically, even as the students around them stared.

“I’m sorry this was so last minute,” Poe said, giving them an apologetic grin.  
  
They had ducked inside out of the cold and were standing in one of the Law Quad hallways, a brick building with feeling of a castle. There was an open courtyard on the other side of the door Finn was standing next to, and through the thick panes of glass in the window he could see green boughs weighed down by inches of fresh white snow. The afternoon sky was dark, no sun shining through the thick clouds. The lampposts in the courtyard had just turned on, a soft golden glow. Rey was in her standard afternoon workout clothes, leggings and a school hoodie, with her hair pulled back (she was still trying to figure out how many layers to wear while jogging), and Finn was wearing (embarrassingly) Poe’s jacket (which he was often wearing, and _not_ because it smelled like Poe Dameron or anything creepy like that, because by this point if it smelled like anything it was probably _Finn_ , but anyway because wearing it made him feel, somehow, safe). Poe, meanwhile, was wearing a nicely-tailored suit with a heavy coat draped over his arm. He looked way more classy than Finn remembered, since it seemed like they’d always been covered in blood or grease or sand every other time before. Basically, like a movie star.   
  
Poe continued: “I'm sorry if you had other plans, but I never know how long I'll be around, and I did want to see you, so.” His shoes were shiny, and his hair was perfectly coiffed despite the falling snow.  
  
“It’s great to see you again,” Rey said, with one of her genuinely warm smiles, and she pulled Poe into an easy hug.  
  
Finn envied them both; it seemed like everything came so naturally to them, when some of the most basic social interactions seemed like minefields for him. He just didn’t always know what was expected, or whether he was going to sound normal or come off like a complete loon. Rey described that as “part of your charm.”  
  
“Super,” Finn finally said, sticking out a hand to shake at the same time that Poe leaned in for a hug. He mumbled, “er, sorry,” awkwardly changing his posture to facilitate the hug. “It’s really good to see you,” he said, as they both pulled back.    
  
“Absolutely,” Poe said, one of his hands lingering on Finn’s shoulder, maybe just realizing that he should ask for his jacket back. “It’s been too long. How’s school?”  
  
“Rey is kicking butt in every direction,” Finn said eagerly, because he was so proud of her. “I have decided that I’m going to pick… a major.”  
  
“Finn’s a great student,” Rey said, kicking Finn’s shin lightly. “You always give yourself such a hard time.”  
  
“Now’s the time to explore,” Poe said. “You don’t have to figure everything out today. Take philosophy classes, or music or kinesiology, something totally different. Challenge your mind. See what you like.”  
  
Because he hadn’t had any choices, before. Finn fought the impulse to look down at his shoes.  
  
“How did you know what you wanted to do?” Rey asked.  
  
“I guess I always knew,” Poe said, thoughtfully. “Ever since I was little, I wanted to fly.”  
  
“Wow,” Finn breathed; Poe Dameron was just so effortlessly cool, the kind of guy who didn't just dream about doing things but actually _did_ things. Probably anything he set his mind to. Finn could see Rey’s lips quirk up in a little smile, so he mouthed, “What?” at her. Poe noticed and looked between them both.  
  
“Well, actually,” Rey said, smoothness dialed to eleven, “I have this terrible programming assignment due tomorrow—” which Finn happened to know she’d already completed, a week early — “and I really have to go, but Finn’s free all day, if you need someone to keep you company while you’re running errands.”  
  
“Oh,” Poe said, and he turned toward Finn. “You mentioned dinner, what about tonight?”  
  
“That sounds like that is a great plan,” Finn said, smiling, and Poe was smiling back at him.  
  
“Bye, boys,” Rey said, making a _call me_ gesture to Finn as she took off.  
  
—  
  
Walking next to Kylo Ren gave Hux a strange, fluttering feeling in the pit of his gut. Doing anything, being anywhere _near_ Kylo Ren had that bloody effect. It was a combination of fear and desire; his knowledge of what Kylo Ren was capable of, what Kylo Ren _was_ , and his knowledge of Kylo Ren the man, the little-more-than-boy, who never cleaned out his refrigerator and always had mountains of leftover sauces and salad dressing lying around from all of his takeout orders. Kylo Ren, with that _mouth_ ; Kylo Ren, taller than Hux, stronger than Hux, darker than Hux. _Shit, shit, shit._  
  
And why the fuck was he buying fish? Kylo Ren could barely fix a bowl of cereal, was he about to blow Hux’s mind by negotiating for the freshest bluefin tuna in flawless Japanese…? But it was too late in the day for anything good to be left at any normal fish market, Hux mused. He stared up at Kylo’s back and lengthened his steps, not content to follow behind Ren like a lackey. He remembered Ren holding him the night before, on the street, the warmth that surrounded him. Of course he’d been stupid enough to hope, but it was obvious that Ren was completely freaking out now, having some kind of slow motion homophobic breakdown, perhaps. As one did.  
  
They went into a pet shop.  
  
“Fish,” Hux said in disbelief.  
  
“Yeah, I need you to help me carry stuff,” Ren responded, sounding distracted.  
  
Hux had no interest in pets. An obedient dog, a guard dog, was one thing. But a dog to care for and train, a dog that required regular walks and expensive toys and food and a registration fee, a chip, would undoubtedly have an expensive medical emergency: a pet dog was inadvisable. He’d never even thought about it, not until now.  
  
Ren had disappeared down an aisle up ahead. Hux strolled on at a leisurely place, feigning an interest in the rats and ferrets he was walking past. He was looking at clothes for dogs when Ren found him, frowning.  
  
“Now’s not the time,” Ren said. “Help me pick some fish.”  
  
“Why are you so hellbent on owning fish?” It nerved him, the way that Ren commanded him — and that his own response was indignation at being treated badly by a friend, as if Ren were a _friend_. The kind of friend who casually chokes you to make a point. Healthy.  
  
He asked it to suggest that Ren was being unreasonable, absurd, but instead, Ren took it to mean that Hux was curious and interested, because he broke into an odd, stammering explanation about needing live things in his home.  
  
“That’s why you have the bonsai,” Hux said, not certain what game Ren was playing at.  
  
“I do,” Ren agreed. “I’m not sure. I need something different. Betta fish are pretty, but they’re aggressive, and I want, like, a whole bunch of them in the tank together. Different kinds.”  
  
_Betta fish are pretty_. What a weird thing to hear a man who was technically a serial killer say, to hear his mouth form those words and see the serious look on his face.  
  
Hux thought about that. A lot. Every time he was in a room with Ren, every time Ren agreed to go for a hike with him or take his picture, every time Ren indulged his little whims, Hux was thinking about the weird emotional leverage he had on this strange man, this monster. He would not think about the stupid look on Ren’s face when he was lying under Hux, fingers tangled up in his hair. How had Ren known? Hux never told anyone, never watched porn, never in any way acknowledged or expressed his sexuality; he considered it an irrelevant, but well-kept secret, a weakness, something that he had cast aside for the sake of success. He’d been terrified of Ren when they first met, not sure whether he even believed in the Force, but certain nonetheless that he would be exposed.  
  
He’d been drinking too much last night, let go of himself too easily. They’d bumped him up to $200 for a half-night. When he got paid in drink tickets he’d pour the drinks into water bottles and sell them on the street, sometimes for food stamps. He knew people who’d use the food stamps to buy things they could re-sell, like muffins bought in bulk, repackaged and sold individually — but the profit was pathetic, and he didn’t have that kind of time to screw around. He’d just get things that wouldn’t go bad and save them for when he had to knuckle down and study, no time to hustle.  
  
Speaking of which, how much money was Ren going to drop on these stupid fish? More than Hux spent on himself in a month? He was looking at all of the decor for tanks, the SpongeBob pineapples and tacky ceramic castles and Cambodian temple ruins. Sacred places. Tacky wasn’t a strong enough condemnation.  
  
“Put that back,” Hux said, when he saw Ren picking one up. “Take the mermaid, take Hello Kitty. Don’t reward them for appropriating a place of immense historical and cultural value.”  
  
Ren looked at him strangely and put it back wordlessly.  
  
Eventually, Ren ended up with a satisfactory number of fish, one of which he insisted be chosen by Hux. Then they had to lug it all back to the car and into Ren’s building. In the elevator, Hux felt his load lightening and knew that it was something Ren was doing through the Force, at once insulting and welcome.  
  
“I can set all of this up, you’ve already helped — more than I expected,” Ren said, once they were back in his apartment, crouched on the floor and surrounded by bags full of colorful rocks. “These fish are my responsibility now.” He said it with such a stupid, determined look on his face. Hux wanted to lean over and suck on Ren’s thick, full bottom lip, to hear Ren moan with pleasure. Ren must have picked up on the thought, because he swallowed audibly and stared at Hux’s mouth with the classic look of a deer in the headlights. A giant, oafish deer.  
  
_Stupid fucking faggot_ , Hux thought, hating himself more than usual, and he watched Ren’s expression crumple in confusion, mouth forming a circle that was going to become a question, and the room was impossibly small and hot, like all of the air had been sucked out of it, and Hux scrambled backwards and to his feet, away from Ren, quickly, before anything else could happen.  
  
“Now that you mention it, I am working later today,” he said, hastily, and added something about an assignment, just lame excuses, anything to get away from whatever was happening. It wasn’t — irrevocable. It just couldn’t happen again. Inviting Ren to the show was just stupid to begin with. All of his little clumsy attempts toward friendship, all the time he spent trying to carefully decode Ren’s texts and expressions and moods, it had to stop. This had to be a completely professional relationship. He could feel himself sweating and wondered how terribly apparent it was. “Ta,” he said, as he backed out the door.  
  
—  
  
The thing that he’d been missing occurred to Kylo as he was leaving a session with Snoke. They’d been talking strategy, not lacerating Kylo’s mind, which was fortunate, because every time he had to make a note of something to tell Hux, some command to give, he had to consciously prevent his heartbeat from speeding up. It was fortunate that he took all of his meditation exercises so seriously and could exert that control with little enough effort that he was able to fully participate in the conversation.  
  
“Darling,” Hux had said. He’d called Kylo Ren _darling_.  
  
For just a few minutes in the morning, Hux had seemed so loose and relaxed and comfortable. At ease, for once. But then he’d grown increasingly tense, until, completely flustered, he’d made that bizarre escape. Throughout the day, Hux had left his emotions unguarded; had been worried about money, irritated about carrying heavy things up the stairs from the garage to the elevator, and then there was a wave of something Kylo simply couldn’t identify, too intense and complex for him to fully grasp, followed by shame and loathing. Peculiar. In fact, it had made Kylo Ren feel something like _sadness_ , like how he felt when he thought about the curve of Leia’s shoulders and her downward gaze when she realized that she’d really lost him. (He saw it from across the world, knowing that she hadn’t chosen to project anything, that she wasn’t attempting to communicate with him — that her defeat was merely so great that anyone with any sensitivity at all would have felt that terrible grief.) A bitter, choking feeling. But had it been his own feeling, or had it come from Hux?  
  
_We should spend more time together_ , Kylo thought, which was silly, really, because they already spent a good deal of time together. It was just that he obviously didn’t know his… companion, rival, friend… nearly half as well as he’d thought, did he? Important tactical information, obviously. Absolutely impersonal, undoubtedly. _Darling._


	7. middle of the day, middle of the road, I'm dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this when I was still in school. now I work full-time and have a totally different perspective.

“After Han Solo introduced Finn and Rey to Be—Kylo Ren, they ran into each other on campus. Phasma didn’t recognize Finn, apparently. Could have been a close one. She was focused on Rey,” Poe Dameron said. He was leaning against the arm of the sofa, arms crossed over his chest. “Does Han know what he’s doing?”  
  
Leia looked over at him, eyes lidded. “He doesn’t coordinate with me.” She paused. “You’re worried about Finn?”  
  
“It’s not that, exactly,” Poe said, straightening up and pacing, pausing to pick up and shake a snow globe resting on the fireplace mantel. It was that, exactly.  
  
“I’d like to meet Rey,” Leia said. “I get a sense that as long as they’re together, Finn will be fine.”  
  
“She’s a good friend,” Poe said, with a slight smile. He turned and stood at attention again. “I’m just concerned at the rate the First Order attacks have increased. There’s videotape surveillance indicating Kylo Ren was present shortly before our new informants allegedly committed suicide, and that was within the week we made contact. We’ve lost touch with four operatives in the last two months and have one confirmed dead. Where are they getting their information? Where are they hiding the bodies?”  
  
“It is disturbing,” Leia agreed. “I am concerned, too, and we are looking into it. We’re no closer to finding the map, but… We’ve identified some of their supply bases, the information is encrypted in a program on this gadget.” She passed a little orange and white thumb drive to him, some obscure robot character. Usually those kinds of things came straight out of pop culture, but Poe wasn’t familiar with this one. Must have been made in house, and it was kind of cute. “You can use the BB-8 program to upload secure communications, as well.”  
  
“Thank you, General,” Poe said, inclining in a slight bow.  
  
“Now tell me that you’re staying for dinner,” she said.  
  
—  
  
Kylo Ren was sitting by himself in the cafe on campus. It was truly an inexplicable situation. He’d invited Hux, he’d been sitting and waiting, contemplating sending a picture of the slice of carrot cake he’d ordered, and then the answering text came: “Is this related to business, or will it be personal?”  
  
“No specific business,” Kylo Ren replied casually.  
  
He had to pause, his thumbs hovering over the screen, when he saw the next response: “Then I do not have time to meet with you. I am prioritizing my studies and preparing for exams and will not be available for further social encounters.”  
  
“Seriously?” was the only thing Kylo could think to say.  
  
The little text bubble appeared, stayed on the screen as if Hux had quite a bit to say, and finally disappeared. Then, all that he texted back was: “Yes.”  
  
_What were you going to write?_ Kylo wanted to ask, but it was clearly the end of the conversation.  
  
He was still sitting there by himself, the carrot cake untouched, when Rey slid into a seat across from him.  
  
“Hi there,” she said, in her posh accent, the tip of her nose bright pink. She had earbuds dangling over her shoulders and had been, he had to assume, at the gym.  
  
“Good day,” he said, stiffly.  
  
“Why aren’t you eating your cake?” she asked, digging through her bag. When he didn’t answer, she looked up and added, “Is it okay if I sit here?”  
  
“Of course it is,” he said. “It’s not my cake. But the person I bought it for ‘will not be available for further social encounters.’”  
  
“Ouch. That’s harsh,” she said, spreading out a binder and two textbooks and pulling out a pencil case shaped like some kind of classic car (with tail fins). She had such a wholesome look, and with those big lovely eyes, he couldn’t imagine that anyone would turn down an opportunity to eat sweets with her.  
  
“Yes, it is,” he said, frowning. “It doesn’t make any sense.”  
  
“You seem like you wouldn’t have much time for dating,” she said, and she said it with such confidence, he wondered how she could have possibly gotten such a strong impression during their limited acquaintance.  
  
“No, it’s not… a date,” he said, trying to explain. “We’ve been working together for a while, and he keeps inviting me to do things, so I thought I should… invite him, too. I don’t understand why he would react like this.”  
  
“People are mysterious,” she agreed, scratching out some long and complicated formula on a crisp white sheet of paper. She tapped her pencil against her mouth. (Of course she was the kind of person who would still use an actual wooden pencil.) “Was it that red-haired boy who was here before?”  
  
“Yes,” he said, surprised that she remembered.  
  
“He was eating carrot cake then, too,” she said. “He looked very serious. I think you were trying to do something considerate. Maybe it’s not personal. Sometimes when we think other people are upset about us, or something that we did, or whatever, it’s really something internal that they’re going through.”  
  
“How old are you?” he asked.  
  
“Eighteen,” she said brightly, punching some numbers into an extremely low-tech, clunky calculator. She kept pulling things out of her pencil case like Mary Poppins.  
  
“Hmm,” he said. It had to be that glow. She still had it, a kind of warmth and light that radiated from her. Interacting with her alone made it more obvious, and more important, than it had been when he’d been eating dinner in a crowded restaurant. It was clearly the Force shining through her. Was Snoke aware there was such a strong user in their proximity? Was she herself even aware? No doubt she thought that her simple insights came to her naturally, from some powers of observation or intuition or empathy, without beginning to comprehend what a special gift she had. How unfortunate that she was entirely untrained and not even trying to tap into the pure, unrestrained power of the Dark Side. He could sense that she would be… real competition.  
  
“I think it _is_ personal,” Kylo Ren finally said. “We had a very awkward moment yesterday. He was clearly upset, but I have no idea why. I just asked him to help me acquire some fish.” Not to be shared with Rey: the part of the story where he and Hux fooled around and now maybe he wanted to try it again, but apparently Hux did _not_. Or, basically, the entire story.  
  
“Fish?”  
  
“Yes, I purchased several slender danios, gouramis, raspboras, and plecos, which are a member of the catfish family. According to my research, they will live together peacefully.”  
  
“Fascinating,” she said, like she really meant it.  
  
“Actually, he was partial to the gouramis. They’re very colorful. And they’re called ‘labyrinth fish’ because of a breathing organ… Regardless. I suppose I shouldn’t go into the details, it was not a public scene.”  
  
“That’s probably for the best,” she agreed, erasing something.  
  
“Do you like carrot cake?” he asked.  
  
She looked up at him. “No, you should get a box to go,” she said. “And offer it to your friend later. You’ll have a chance.”  
  
“How can you possibly know that?” he asked in a silky voice.  
  
“I’m not sure,” she said, looking down at her paper. “But that’s what I think you should do.”  
  
“Where’s your friend, Finn? Have you talked to Han Solo recently?”  
  
“He’s out of town,” she said, without specifying to whom she referred. “We’re not flying in the snow. Don’t you talk to him regularly?”  
  
“I had a falling out with my parents,” Kylo admitted. He was almost about to say, “I started a fire,” but caught himself. How positively off the rails he had gotten, to be sharing so much with this girl. He had no idea what her agenda was, or who might be maneuvering her into his life. It wasn’t entirely impossible that Leia was somehow behind this, or that even the Force could have caused them to drift into the same currents. Perhaps it was some sort of insane desire to perform for her, to appear “cool” or “mysterious.” The same kind of impulse that resulted in his motorcycle helmet and extremely stylish designer wardrobe. _Get real_ , he told himself. I _can do a lot better than some scavenger who stole my father’s hideous van._ He was always trying to impress people. It was weak and pathetic. He ground his teeth together. “I’m going to get a box, like you suggested, and then I’m afraid that I must take my leave of you.”  
  
“Verily,” she said, dryly.  
  
Walking home, he called his father and left some bizarre message about how it would be nice to know if someone was going out of town, which made it seem like he actually cared, which meant that Snoke’s worst suspicions had been confirmed: he was weak. And even worse, he was clearly losing his mind.  
  
—  
  
Hux took a deep breath in, and then let it out. He’d taken one yoga class once and learned just a little bit about relaxing breathing techniques. He’d been surprised by Ren’s text, since he’d assumed that the other man was feeling equally as awkward and ashamed, but when he saw what Ren had written, he immediately became suspicious. It was entirely unlike Ren to extend such an invitation, which meant that the fool had some kind of agenda. Most likely to humiliate Hux and assert his own domination, which was entirely unnecessary, since it was already obvious who had the motorcycle and the penthouse apartment and the regular, personal meetings with the Supreme Commander.  
  
It hurt Hux how little he had, in comparison. He had the feeling of his arms wrapped around Ren’s waist. He had a moment of quiet on the street, and the goofy look on Ren’s face when he was making fun of Hux’s first name. He’d looked so happy, so free. It was a good look for Ren, in fact. It made Hux wonder who Ren would be without Snoke, without the First Order, without any of their missions or plans or meetings, without victory or defeat, just living, making his own decisions from day to day.  
  
Would Ren have been a ruthless killer, operating on his own? Perhaps driven by no purpose, he would simply become a madman, striking at random. A nightmare, and then — caught — banished to the mundane, the banal indignities of incarceration. Or perhaps he would have been something entirely different. Maybe he would have run away to join the circus, or he’d have been an art student, with his hair stilled pulled back in stupid buns, wearing knockoff Yohji Yamamoto since he wouldn’t be able to afford the real thing, or even sewing his own — imagine a broke and janky Kylo, trying to maintain his aesthetic with Hux’s budget.  
  
But the point of avoiding Kylo Ren wasn’t to merely sit around thinking about him in his absence; it was nearly as bad as having the real Ren there.  
  
How fortunate that Hux had his old brusque routine to fall back on. And so many enterprises to occupy his time. He did have to study, and he had to work, and he had to crunch numbers and contact suppliers for Snoke, and perhaps it was time to touch up his old PowerPoints.  
  
And in the last moments of each day, he would deny himself of the luxury of remembering Ren’s arms around him, the sudden sense of completely and total security. It was childish, a depraved and sad impulse. His mantra was _control_.  
  
—  
  
“So, how was the show?” Phasma asked.  
  
He’d gone all the way to his apartment, refrigerated the cake, and then realized that he could not bear to be alone with the fish. _Then what was the point?_ He was completely losing his mind. He had been for weeks. It was happening in slow motion, or the moment was simply extending, with Kylo Ren suspended in space, inching his way further over the edge and into the abyss.  
  
But, half an hour later, here he was on Phasma’s couch, reading over some of her work on an economics assignment, and she was boiling pasta — not ramen, but real pieces of spaghetti. She even had some sauce bubbling in another pan, although it had come directly from a jar.  
  
“You know, you can add some spices to improve the flavor,” he suggested. (He had read about it in a magazine.)  
  
“Spices?” She stared at him. “I have salt and pepper, if that’s what you mean.”  
  
“No,” he said, coldly.  
  
“You’re avoiding the question,” she said, throwing a piece of wet spaghetti at him.  
  
“What show?” he grumbled.  
  
“Hux’s show, duh.”  
  
“Oh. How did you know about that?”  
  
“He’s been going on and on about should he invite you or not or should he or not, like, for weeks. I keep telling him to just grab life by the balls, but he never takes my advice.”  
  
“How does one grab life by the balls?”  
  
“Firmly,” she said.  
  
“I drank too much,” he said. “Aside from that, it was entirely adequate.”  
  
“Sounds like a blast,” she said sarcastically.  
  
“It was fun,” he confessed, finally. “I don’t go out much. What do you mean, he was going on about it?”  
  
“He’s always so worried about what you think about him,” she said, and then considered. “Don’t tell him I told you, but sometimes I just cannot stand all the tension.”  
  
“Tension?” he repeated blankly.  
  
She stared at him. “Never mind.”  
  
By the time he felt out her thoughts, she had already turned her attention to draining the spaghetti. Her mind was like a set of instructions from IKEA; neat, uncluttered, and deceptively simple on the surface. He could briefly feel... the impact of a heavy weight on a human skull. A dark tremor rippled through him, something submerged. But then it was gone. He was missing so many things: the subtext of her comment, the true nature of whatever feelings she had buried, but he didn’t have the energy to go digging any deeper. They would eat pasta together and by not saying anything, they could both pretend that there was nothing to be said.  
  
—  
  
“You have to tell me ALL ABOUT IT,” Rey said, throwing her bag down on the floor. It landed with an appalling thunk, and Finn found himself wondering how much it actually weighed. Could he lift it with one arm? Her eyes were scrunched up and she was smiling in a big way that exposed all of her teeth. She was _too powerful_.  
  
As usual, they were hanging out in Finn’s dorm room before walking down the hill to the dining hall together. There were flakes of snow caught in the folds of Rey’s coat, but Finn didn’t care about them melting onto the floor.  
  
“I still don’t know how he feels,” Finn said, throwing himself backwards on his bed and clutching a pillow to his chest.  
  
Rey was sitting down to untie her shoes. “Sorry, did I say just skip the details because I don’t really care?”  
  
“No, so, okay… Okay. I haven't been to that many restaurants, so I thought we should just go back to that place we went with Han and Kylo Ren, because—“  
  
“The guacamole,” Rey said.  
  
“Right, exactly. Not too classy, so I didn’t have to dress up, because I don’t even have nice shoes right now. So, fortunately, he happens to also like avocados.” (“Most people do,” Rey said) “I think that was a good choice. But we were talking kind of about, like, how I’m doing now, you know, after. Being out in the world, away from the collective.”  
  
“So, Poe knows about the… uh, the cult?”  
  
“It wasn’t—well, yeah, it was pretty much a cult. Actually, uh, I guess, what happened is that we kind of had like, kidnapped Poe… Dameron? And so then I was supposed to, um, basically just execute him, and then instead of doing that I was kind of like, what if we just get out of here?” Finn said all of this in the most casual way he possibly could, like it was no big deal at all.  
  
“What?” Rey was giving him that look she gave him when he was being extra Finn.  
  
“Right, yeah, that’s the short version, the summary, if you will, and then so we did get out of there, and Poe was like, ‘Hey man, my jacket looks good on you, why don’t you keep it,’ and I was like, what if I just die? But so anyway, at dinner, he was just asking me how my classes are going and if I’m making friends, if I feel comfortable and safe here, if I’m happy. I mean, I feel like I can talk to him about anything.” He paused, then rolled over to look at Rey. “Nothing you haven’t already heard, of course.”    
  
“It sounds like he really cares about you,” Rey said, honestly. She was sitting with one knee tucked under her and the other up, arms wrapped around it. Her hair was glossy and her skin was flawless, as usual.  
  
“Yeah, but we didn’t hold hands or anything, and he said he can’t tell me what his schedule is like because the less I know the better. He probably feels like being attached to people makes him vulnerable, so he never has a real relationship, and just by being friends I’m this huge burden, and one day when he’s flying in a storm being chased by two bad guys, at the critical moment, as lightning strikes his propeller, he’s going to think, ‘Fuck, why did I give my cool jacket to that guy.’”  
  
“You’re being dramatic,” Rey said, not even bothering to comment on the propeller. “He’s older than you are, so maybe he doesn’t think it’s appropriate to be forward with you. Maybe he’s just trying to get to know you.”  
  
“He probably thinks I’m just a kid,” Finn muttered.  
  
Rey rolled her eyes. “Did you have fun?”  
  
“He did say we should do it again,” Finn said, eyes closed, smiling blissfully.  
  
“Maybe he’ll be in town a little longer,” Rey suggested. “We should find out if there’s fun stuff going on and then you can invite him.”  
  
“What about you, are you talking to anyone?”  
  
“I’m not,” Rey said, simply.  
  
“Is there anyone you’re interested in?”  
  
“Not really,” she said, rotating one of her shoulders and then running through some neck stretches.  
  
“Oh,” Finn said. “Is it annoying listening to me talk about this all the time?”  
  
“Not at all,” Rey said, with one of her beatific smiles. “It’s important to you.”  
  
—  
  
Ren stood in the hall, facing himself in a mirror. His dark hair was shaggy, but not unkempt. There were circles under his eyes, which didn’t make sense, because he’d been sleeping more lately. Eating hadn’t seemed as important lately, but even as his cheekbones sharpened, his face never lost its softness.  
  
The weird thing was that he hadn’t had one of his rages in at least… five days. Five days and counting. He hadn’t smashed any glasses, put his fist through a wall, swept a pile of personal belongings from the table to the floor, overturned the table, broken the leg off a chair, or driven a fork into some unyielding surface. He hadn’t choked anyone, raided anyone’s mind, or bitten his own lip until he could taste blood. None of it.  
  
He’d been drifting through his days like a Force ghost, practically impassive and detached, as far as Kylo Ren’s emotional intensity went. He’d been showing up to his classes, completing his assignments on time, submitting the odious comments on others’ insipid forum posts as he was required in one of his classes. He even briefly saw a clip of his mother speaking on the news, which would normally result in something getting smashed and quite a bit of yelling and so on.  
  
What was different, he thought, was that Rey had entered his life, and Hux had abruptly departed. There was no longer any banter, no witty repartee, before or after their classes. They acknowledged one another, and Hux was completely respectful, but in a distant way. His commentary on Ren’s performance in class was typically limited to something like “Adequate” or nothing at all (Kylo Ren didn’t like being on the receiving end of “adequate,” but nothing was worse). He would appear punctually for any kind of business discussion, although it seemed that he preferred Phasma be present as well, and he answered all of Kylo Ren’s questions promptly. However, had the question any hint of something personal about it, and Hux would promptly shut it down with some polite(-ish) non-answer, like, “Now is not the appropriate time for that discussion,” or, “I hardly think that’s germane to the conversation, Ren.”  
  
Well, really!  
  
Meanwhile, Ren found himself going to the gym with Rey. They often worked out in companionable silence, stretching together to warm up, both listening to their own music, and Rey was much more of a cardio fiend, whereas Kylo Ren preferred the weight machines. They might even stop to get food after.  
  
As far as he could tell, her motives were _entirely_ altruistic. She didn’t want him to look at her assignments, didn’t want him to critique her resume or cover letter, didn’t ask about borrowing his LSAT study books, and never asked him to pay for anything. Of course, there had to be _something_ driving her behavior, but her thoughts and feelings were impenetrable, cloaked in a blinding white light like a garland of stars.  
  
He could tell by watching her that she was going to excel on the rowing team; the oars, the water would move as an extension her will, helping her to accomplish her purpose more effectively without her even realizing how she was doing it. She would excel in her classes, as well, and why not in every endeavor? Her actions were always guided by the Force; she moved through the world with an exquisite, ignorant harmony. Watching her in motion was entrancing, and he had to wonder if anyone with any Force sensitivity felt the same way when they watched him. Not to assume that anyone was watching him, of course, and he wasn’t creeping on her or anything — it was just so strange to be around someone else who moved with the Force.  
  
Did he dare to say it? She had an innately soothing presence.  
  
Just thinking about it made him snarl, and he half-heartedly clutched the table he was leaning on with such strength that the wood splintered. The entirely bloody mess aggravated him to no end. He was forged in pain and suffering, and he was supposed to be stronger for his hatred and dark passion. Yet he felt at peace, balanced, after his time with the girl. Perhaps it was because there was more than just light within her, swirling around like the blackness between galaxies. As heavy, so to speak, as the dark matter that made up so much of the universe’s weight. Thinking about it in empyrean terms helped to calm him, to ground him. It was all bigger than he was, bigger than he could possibly understand.  
  
He’d been sidetracked by inconsequential matters; he was not like the other students around him — his concerns were more significant than what party he was going to on the weekend, or what his friends thought about him; friends were impermanent, meaningless.  
  
However. Having said that. His relationship with Hux was more complicated than a simple friendship or the professionalism granted between two colleagues. Their previous activities had been most enriching, Kylo decided. Whatever damage had been done between them would have to be repaired. (Perhaps, he pondered, it was related to the vomit: Hux seemed like the sort of person who would especially not appreciate vomit.) He could start by returning Hux’s freshly-laundered shirt, which he’d left neatly folded on the counter in his foyer, innocently assuming that he would be seeing Hux again quite soon. How curious — thinking about it caused him some distress.  
  
It was also time to ask Snoke for another assignment. If he could get away from this town, it would help to clear his mind.

 

 

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from _the breakup_ by LANY, which I happened to be listening to.


End file.
